Freedom of Movement and Speech

“Whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body.”

This is the wording of a new “vice and virtue” law put in place by the Taliban in Afghanistan, in an attempt to control women and supposedly avoid leading men into temptation.

“It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” UN special representative to Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, said in a statement. “It extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.”

According to The Guardian, an Afghan lawyer’s association is speaking out against this, saying it violates 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is gender apartheid, where women and girls are blocked from attending secondary school; banned from almost every form of paid employment; prevented from walking in public parks, attending gyms or beauty salons and must comply with a strict dress code. Under Taliban rule, women can be stoned to death in public for adultery.