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From Iraq to Afghanistan to the US, basic freedoms for women are being eroded as governments begin to roll back existing laws.
Just a few months ago there was a ban on Afghans women who speak in public was the latest move by the Taliban, who took back control of the country in 2021. From August, the ban included singing, reading, reciting poetry and even laughing outdoors.
The Taliban Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which implements one of the most radical interpretations of Islamic law, enforces these rules. They are part of a broader whole “vice and virtue” laws that severely restrict women’s rights and freedoms. Women are even forbidden of reading the Quran out loud to other women in public.
Over the past three years, the Taliban have stripped the women living there of many basic rights, leaving them with very little to do.
From 2021, the Taliban started introducing restrictions on girls’ education, starting with a ban on co-education and then a ban on girls attending secondary schools. This was followed by closing blind girls’ schools in 2023, and requiring girls in grades four to six (ages nine to 12) to cover their faces on the way to school.
Women in the Kandahar region can no longer attend universities, receive a national diploma, or train as a midwife or nurse. Women are no longer allowed to become a flight attendant, or to work outside the home. Women-run bakeries in the capital Kabul are now banned. Women now usually cannot earn money or leave their homes. In April 2024, the Taliban in Helmand province told the media to refrain from even featuring women’s voices.
Afghanistan is in last place Women, Peace and Security Index and officials at the UN and elsewhere have mentioned it “gender apartheid”. Afghan women risk their lives – facing surveillance, intimidation, abuse, arbitrary detention, torture and exile – to protest against the Taliban.
Many diplomats debate its importance “involve” with the Taliban, yet this has not stopped the attack on women’s rights. When diplomats “get involved,” they tend to focus on counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, business deals, and so on hostage returns. Despite everything that has happened to the Afghan women for a short period of timeCritics suggest this rarely makes it onto diplomats’ priority lists.
Iraq’s coming of age
Meanwhile, in Iraq, an amendment to Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law was implemented on August 4, 2024, which could potentially lower the age of consent for marriage up to nine years old from 18 (or 15 with permission from a judge and parents) was nominated by MP Ra’ad al-Maliki and supported by conservative Shia factions in the government.
The law would have the potential to allow family law issues – such as marriage – to be adjudicated by religious authorities. This change could not only legalize child marriage, but also strip women of rights to divorce, child custody and inheritance.
Iraq already has a high percentage underage marriagewith 7% of girls married by age 15, and 28% married before the legal age of 18.
Unregistered marriages, not legally established in court, but conducted through religious or tribal authorities, prevent girls from gaining access to civil rightsand leave women and girls vulnerable to exploitation, abuse and neglect, with limited opportunities to seek justice.
Many women’s groups have already done that mobilized against the law. But the amendment does passed the second reading in parliament. If implemented, it could pave the way for further changes that deepen sectarian divisions and move the country further away from a unified legal system. It would also be a particularly worrying step backwards in the protection of children’s rights and gender equality.
Abortion rights in the US
Meanwhile, in the US, women’s access to abortion has eroded significantly in recent years. At the end of 2021, the US was officially labeled a declining democracy by an international think tank.
Six months later, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Roe v Wade, which had guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion for nearly fifty years, was overturned. This led to a flurry of restrictive laws, with more than a quarter of US states enacting outright bans or bans. strict restrictions on abortion.
Republican US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested in May 2022 that women should remain celibate if they did not wants to get pregnant. If only all women had that choice. Sexual abuse even takes place in the US every 68 seconds. One in five American women has fallen victim to it an attempted or completed rape. Between 2009 and 2013, US child protective services found strong evidence pointing to this Every year, 63,000 children became victims of sexual abuse.
These developments reflect a disturbing pattern. There are indications from Donald Trump’s first term that there could be a further erosion of women’s rights during his second presidency. There were significant ones during his previous term attempts to weaken access to health carewhere his foreign policy is the “global gag rule” limiting access to reproductive health care for women worldwide through financing conditions.
Vulnerability of women’s rights
If the world can tolerate the abuses of the Taliban, Iraq’s restrictive laws and US restrictions on access to abortion, it shows the fragility of the rights of women and girls worldwide, and how easy it is to abolish them .
The UN agency, UN Women, says another is needed 286 years to close the global gender gap in legal protection. No country has achieved gender equality yetbased on the gender pay gap, legal equality and social inequality levels. Women and girls continue to face discrimination in every corner of the world, and it seems to be getting worse. But despite everything, women continue to resist.
(Author: Rear ElhinnawySenior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University)
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