Taliban Sending Women To Jail To Protect Them From Gender-Based Violence

Ever since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2021, women have been suffering in the country. There has been a rampant increase in crimes against women. The Taliban is now sending women to jail in the name of protecting them from gender-based violence, which is a blow to women’s rights.

According to a United Nations report, there has been an increase in human rights violations. The Taliban authorities are sending victims of gender-based violence to prison in order to protect them.

Officials from the Taliban-led administration told the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) that if women have no male relatives to stay with or if their male relatives are considered unsafe for them, then these women will be sent to prison. 

Blow to women’s rights

The UN report said that women were sent to prison for their protection “akin to how prisons have been used to accommodate drug addicts and homeless people in Kabul.”

Before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, there were around 23 state-run women’s protection centers in the country. The centers were used to provide shelter to women who were victims of gender-based violence. 

The Taliban authorities are calling these centers a ‘western concept’ and sending women to prison. The Taliban officials told the United Nations that there was no need for such shelters and that they were a western concept.

Women are being sent to jail in the name of protection.

Women atrocities in Afghanistan

The Taliban is violating human rights and promoting gender inequality. Since the Taliban takeover,  women and girls have been deprived of their rights. 

Taliban banned female students from attending school beyond third grade. Previously, young girls were permitted to attend school until the sixth grade. Later on, the Ministry of Education’s officials asked the principals of schools and educational institutions to ensure that “girls over 10 years old are not allowed to study in primary schools.”

A sixth-grade student in eastern Afghanistan told the BBC, “We were told that girls who are tall and over 10 years old are not allowed to enter the school.”

 In August, the Taliban authorities banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir National Park. The decision was issued by Afghanistan’s acting minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi. 

The Taliban authorities have prioritized Islamic knowledge over basic literacy and numeracy. They have focused toward madrassas or religious schools. They only allow boys to attend schools.