Taliban Decree Blocks Window Construction To Keep Women Out of Sight

The Taliban are ordering Afghan residents to board up the windows on residential buildings to prevent women without hijabs from being seen inside their homes.In the decree posted on X by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, new buildings must be constructed without any windows that could give a view into “the courtyard, kitchen neighbor’s well, and other places usually used by women” according to Agence France Presse. “Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” reads the decree.The law also requires older buildings to have their windows blocked or covered up altogether, with owners required to construct a wall “to avoid nuisances caused to neighbors.”The latest decree is just the latest in a long line of laws enacted by the Taliban since it took back power in Afghanistan after American forces withdrew from the country in 2021. In the past three years, the Islamic emirate has blocked women from going to work or other public places and prohibited women from going to the salon, working out at a gym, and praying or even speaking in public.Within the first month of assuming control of the government, the Taliban’s education ministry placed limits on women’s ability to receive a proper education, announcing that girls were barred from attending school beyond the sixth grade. In December 2022, it banned women from colleges and universities.“They have already ordered that women’s voices shouldn’t be heard in public, and now they are essentially stopping women from even looking out the window,” interim women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, Heather Barr, told the Independent. “They are stopping women from being seen. They are stopping women from seeing the world. It’s a total annihilation of women’s personhood, and it is clearly ongoing.“We don’t have any idea where this will end,” she said.In another decree disseminated last week, the Taliban said that it would revoke the licenses of any nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan that employs women. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Volker Turk, warned that with a 50 percent poverty rate in Afghanistan, such a move would prevent the distribution of life-saving humanitarian aid. “I once again urge the de facto authorities in Afghanistan to revoke this deeply discriminatory decree, and all other measures which seek to eradicate women and girls’ access to education, work and public services, including healthcare, and that restrict their freedom of movement,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “No country can progress – politically, economically or socially – while excluding half of its population from public life.”

Taliban Decree Blocks Window Construction To Keep Women Out of Sight

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