The UN and human rights organizations have condemned new Taliban laws that prohibit women from showing their faces or speaking outside their homes. These “vice and virtue” regulations, approved by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, require women to fully cover their bodies, including their faces, to prevent men from falling into temptation. Women’s voices are also restricted, deemed to be potential sources of vice, with singing or speaking in public now forbidden.
The laws mandate that women who must leave their homes for essential reasons must completely conceal their appearance and voice. Men, too, are required to dress modestly, covering themselves from their navels to their knees in public. The new rules also prevent Afghan women from making eye contact with men outside of their immediate family, and taxi drivers face punishment if they transport a woman without a male escort.
Those who do not comply face penalties determined by Taliban officials. Roza Otunbayeva, the UN’s special representative for Afghanistan, expressed concern, stating these restrictions extend the already severe limitations on women’s rights that the Taliban have enforced since taking power in 2021. She criticized the broad and vague nature of the laws, giving officials undue power to detain individuals for minor infractions.
Afghan legal expert Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat condemned the laws, saying they violate Afghanistan’s legal obligations and clash with Islamic principles, where virtue is not enforced by coercion. He also noted that the new laws breach the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Afghan activist Fawzia Koofi, a former vice president of the Afghan parliament, denounced the laws as an effort to erase women from society, stating that labeling women’s voices as a form of intimacy is terrifying. She criticized the global community for its lack of response, arguing that this indifference only empowers the Taliban.
Shukria Barakzai, former Afghan parliamentarian and ambassador to Norway, echoed these concerns, criticizing international organizations for normalizing relations with the Taliban while ignoring their blatant human rights violations.
Since regaining power, the Taliban have established what human rights groups call “gender apartheid,” systematically excluding women from public life. Before these new laws, women were already banned from secondary education, most employment, parks, gyms, and beauty salons. Recently, the Taliban reintroduced the public flogging and stoning of women for adultery.
