The lives of women and girls in Afghanistan have deteriorated since the Taliban took over the war-torn country a year ago, according to three UN agencies. It has been a year of increasing disrespect for their right to live free and equal lives, denying them opportunity to livelihoods, access to health care and education, and escape from situations of violence, Sima Bahous, Executive Director at UN Women, the entity devoted to women empowerment, said in a statement released on Monday. Ms. Bahous outlined how the Taliban meticulously constructed policies of inequality have set Afghanistan apart from the rest of the international community, wiping out decades of progress on gender equality and women  rights in mere months.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from going to high school and effectively barred from political participation, as the Taliban has an all-male cabinet and there is no Ministry of Women Affairs. Afghan women are now mostly restricted from working outside the home, they must cover their faces in public, and they have to be accompanied by a male chaperone when they travel. Furthermore, they continue to be subjected to multiple forms of gender-based violence. Soaring food and fuel prices - worsened by a drought and the war in Ukraine - mean that roughly 95 per cent of the population, and nearly all female-headed households, do not get enough to eat, according to the UN. Ms. Kanem said keeping girls out of secondary school not only violates their right to education and prevents them from realizing their full potential, it but also puts them at increased risk of early marriage, early pregnancy, violence and abuse.

The breakdown of the health system has compromised women and girls access to reproductive health services, including maternal health care, particularly for the more than nine million people living in remote areas of the country. For the estimated 24,000 women who give birth each month in hard-to-reach areas, childbirth can, in effect, be a death sentence, she said. Afghanistan was already struggling with education even before the Taliban takeover last August, as more than four million children were already out of school, 60 per cent of them girls.Barring girls from attending secondary school also has a monetary cost, according to a new analysis by the UN Children Fund (UNICEF). It shows that the country loses 2.5 per cent of its annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) because of the decision.

Credit:
Independent News Pakistan-INP