Faithful and Steadfast; Afghan Women Keep Moving

Afghan women face the most severe circumstance in two decades following Taliban’s orders to put pressure on independents groups.

Shamail Naseri has been hopping from place to place for a long time to avoid being apprehended by Taliban officials. Naseri has Spoken up for Afghan women’s condition, who have been increasingly marginalized since the Taliban took control last year. The Taliban made two unsuccessful attempts to have me arrested. They couldn’t find me because I hid and turned off my phone,” she told reporters.

When Taliban seized control, they pledged to uphold women’s rights and the right to free expression. However, the country’s new leaders have broken their pledges, restricting women’s rights, enforcing dress rules for women, and closing girls’ schools, reminding their oppressive rule in the last decade of the twentieth century.

The Taliban-led Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan government dismantled crucial state supportive services like the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. It also shut important institution, like the extensive network of women’s shelters in the nation. under this circumstance, Naseri and other women’s activists took an active role in helping defenseless Afghan women.

Naseri is still committed to her goal despite the dangers to her safety. She felt safe disclosing her full name publicly, unlike all the other Afghan-based campaigners in this piece.

Behind the scenes, the Afghani women’s mass demonstrations have garnered attention from all around the world. Female rights activists have been slowly establishing networks of assistance for disadvantaged women. They have established neighborhood-level organisations, gathered data on instances of gender-based abuse, and established safe places for women around the nation.

Women’s rights activists in Afghanistan are gradually organizing themselves. According to analysts, these initiatives are now unable to close the enormous difference in the nation as they are still geographically and in terms of breadth restricted.

Afghan Women; A Rising Voice

Afghans cannot quit up now since there is such a great demand for women, according to Duniya, an organizer for an Afghan NGO

The UN reports that since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, women ‘s employment has decreased by 28% there. According to Amnesty International, rates of domestic abuse, involuntary disappearances, torture of nonviolent women demonstrators, and other types of gender-based crimes have drastically increased since Taliban regained control.

Twenty of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces were served by the grassroots network that Duniya’s organisation had built. Over the past ten years, they have supported gender-based crime prevention strategies, female rights, and democratic ideals.

But over the previous year, the organization’s headquarters were shut down, and many of its members left Afghanistan. Even though they were later released, numerous female justice activists were detained for long months.

The United States placed sanctions on the Taliban administration, and several international funders withdrew from Afghanistan after Taliban takeover. Humanitarian relief operations were impeded by the course of events. Due to this, a large number of international NGOs also left the country, in some cases apparently abandoning their own workers.

However, Afghan women from both inside and outside the nation have stepped up to fill the void. After talking with Taliban representatives in 14 regions, Duniya’s NGO was able to restart its career and start activities in late last year.

The Taliban government’s spokesman and policy advisor at the Ministry of Information and Culture rejects that there were any issues with women’s rights or their ability to mobilize socially in the nation.  A number of female organizers claimed that in addition to security concerns, they frequently struggle to get by on the barest necessities and are compelled to operate without any form of funding to assistance even the most basic projects.