Taliban jailing women abuse survivors ‘for their protection’, says UN

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The Taliban is sending hundreds of women who have survived abuse in Afghanistan to prison, claiming it will protect them from gender-based violence, according to a new UN report.

The hardline Islamist regime, which has mostly removed women from public spaces, has also closed 23 state-sponsored protection centres which offered refuge to victims of gender-based violence and helped them recover.

As of this month, there are no such facilities to help women in the crisis-hit nation, the UN report published on Thursday said.

The report said that officials from the Taliban regime told the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan that there was no need for such shelters.

“A de facto police officer [from the Taliban] in the northeastern region [of Afghanistan] said that women’s shelters are a western concept, stressing that women should stay with their brothers, fathers, or husbands,” the report said.

And an official from the department of justice in southern Afghanistan reportedly said: “The Islamic Emirate does not have any shelter for women. They must be with their husbands or other male family members – their mehram.”

The report cited a source from the former attorney general’s office as saying that the Taliban does not see any need for such shelters as “no one will harm women while the Islamic Emirate is in power”, a propagandistic narrative used by the Taliban rulers to deny widely prevalent physical, verbal and emotional abuse of Afghan women.

Afghanistan, under Taliban control, is the only country in the world which does not allow girls and women to go to school, colleges, universities and workplaces. The diktats also prohibit women from travelling without a male guardian or mehram, in a chilling repeat of its 1990s rule.

The ultra-fundamentalist regime has effectively denied 50 per cent of the population education and employment due to its interpretation of Sharia law.

The UN report said Taliban leaders send women who have suffered abuse to prison if they have no male relatives to stay with or if the male relatives are considered unsafe, targeting women’s agency in this new modus operandi.

Afghan women are sent to prison for their protection “akin to how prisons have been used to accommodate drug addicts and homeless people in Kabul”, the report said.

The Taliban is also asking the male relatives for commitments or sworn statements that they will not harm a female relative and offering a guarantee by inviting local elders to witness the process, the report said.

“A de facto appellate court judge in the northeastern region stated that the de facto Cabinet was conducting research to assess if there is a need for women’s shelters,” the report added.

The Taliban has neither revealed how many women are being held in prison nor the conditions under which they are being held and what measures are being taken to protect them. These women also include protesters who have stood up against the regime’s harsh policies towards them.

Women are no longer working in the judiciary or law enforcement, not allowed to deal with crimes of gender-based violence, and only permitted to attend work when called upon by their male supervisors, according to the UN report.

Previously a nation with women in top roles, Afghanistan has for years now ranked among the worst places in the world to be born female.