CREDENTIALS. Women who have been deprived of their jobs in Afghanistan: "We are condemned to stay at home"

Before the Taliban took power, Marzia, 50, had a good job in a ministry in Afghanistan. “I had a good salary. I didn’t have any financial problems. I was able to give my children a good education. And then I liked this job. She was a supervisor a year ago.

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Today she only receives 20,000 Afghanis a month or 220 euros instead of the 1,310 euros monthly salary with which she was able to feed her children and her sick husband who has been bedridden for four years. All colleagues like her had their jobs taken away. Fearing reprisals, Marzia testified on condition of anonymity: “I don’t think the Taliban have changed. It is an obscurantist regime.”

Like them, women in Afghanistan are gradually disappearing from public space, are deprived of education, have to wear the full veil, and are excluded from politics and the media. The Taliban regime has implemented a harsh version of Islamic Sharia law that leaves no room for those who represent more than half of the population.

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During the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which was supported by the international community between 2001 and 2021, women in the rank of “minors under the guardianship of a male relative” lost all their acquired rights.” When universities for girls reopened, we had hope . We said to each other that they will reopen secondary schools,” regrets Maliha.

“It’s been a year and nothing has changed. There is no more hope. The Taliban are the same as they were twenty years ago.”

Maliha, a young Afghan woman

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A law graduate, she taught in secondary school, but the Taliban closed the public institute where she worked. At 30, she resumed studying business administration. But for her, like for many Afghan women, the future is one giant black hole. “We are doomed to stay at home,” Maliha resigned easily.

Deprived of education, banned from public space… The desperation of Afghan women. Report in Kabul by Sonia Ghezali.

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