The 300-plus reported instances of Afghan girls being killed by males for the reason that Taliban seized energy are simply “the tip of the iceberg” in terms of the true scale of gender-based violence in Afghanistan, in keeping with new knowledge evaluation.
Open-source investigators on the Centre of Data Resilience’s Afghan Witness venture combed by way of social media and information websites to file 332 reported instances of femicide for the reason that Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021.
The evaluation, which is likely one of the first makes an attempt to attempt to gather knowledge on the degrees of sexual and bodily violence towards girls in Afghanistan, additionally discovered 840 girls and ladies had been topic to gender-based violence from 1 January 2022 – when Afghan Witness started collating knowledge – to 30 June this 12 months, nearly one a day.
Greater than half of the reported instances mentioned that Taliban officers had been accountable. Evaluation of crimes allegedly perpetrated by the Taliban revealed 115 incidents of sexual violence, together with compelled marriage, sexual slavery, assault and rape.
One other 73 incidents involved non-sexual violence and torture, whereas 113 concerned the reported arrests of ladies, many for flouting the regime’s repressive insurance policies on girls and ladies, which embody forbidding them to journey vital distances with out a male guardian.
The Taliban’s shutdown of most impartial media retailers and the widespread restriction and persecution of journalists – in addition to persevering with political repression and on-line intimidation – implies that the variety of instances reported is prone to be an enormous underestimation of the true scale of loss of life and violence inflicted on Afghan girls, in keeping with David Osborn, the venture director of Afghan Witness.
“What now we have collected is simply the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “[It is] increasingly more troublesome for Afghan girls to talk out and for us to doc gender-based violence and the influence of Taliban rule on girls and ladies.”
Within the three years since seizing energy from the US-backed authorities, the Taliban have imposed what human rights teams are calling a “gender apartheid” on Afghanistan’s 14 million girls and ladies, excluding them from nearly each facet of public life and denying them entry to the justice system.
Ladies and ladies are blocked from attending secondary faculty; banned from nearly each type of paid employment; prevented from strolling in public parks, attending gyms or magnificence salons; and informed to adjust to a strict costume code.
The Taliban have additionally introduced the reintroduction of the general public flogging and stoning of ladies for adultery.
A UN survey final December discovered that 76% of Afghan girls and ladies who responded classed their psychological well being for the reason that Taliban seized energy as “dangerous” or “very dangerous”, reporting insomnia, despair, nervousness, lack of urge for food and complications on account of their trauma.
In response to repressive Taliban insurance policies, some girls have continued to withstand, staging a sequence of road protests in Kabul and different main cities. Final month, the Guardian printed accounts from feminine protesters who described how they had been overwhelmed, abused or jailed for talking out – one video seen by the Guardian appeared to indicate a feminine protester being raped inside a Taliban jail.
Afghan Witness’s open-source knowledge evaluation additionally chronicles how public protests towards the Taliban regime have declined considerably over the previous three years.
The analysis reveals that within the months after the 2021 Taliban takeover, 88% of protests had been held open air. This dropped to 49% in 2022 and continued to fall. Now 94% of demonstrations are held on-line, usually with areas and identities hidden.
The Taliban additionally seem to have tightened their enforcement of sure restrictions over the previous 12 months. Afghan Witness verified footage of ladies being arrested “en masse” in Kabul in January 2024, allegedly for failing to adjust to hijab guidelines. Some younger girls who mentioned that they had been arrested for “dangerous hijab’’ additionally say they had been topic to violence and sexual assault whereas in detention.
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Data and help for anybody affected by rape or sexual abuse points is on the market from the next organisations. Within the UK, Rape Disaster affords help on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Eire. Within the US, Rainn affords help on 800-656-4673. In Australia, help is on the market at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Different worldwide helplines could be discovered at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
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