KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Australia has denounced the Taliban’s newly ratified morality laws, criticizing the aggravated restrictions on women and girls.
“Australia condemns the Taliban’s efforts to silence the voices of Afghanistan’s women and girls,” Penny Wong, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, said in a post on X. “The latest vice and virtue decree bans women’s voices and bare faces in public.”
The “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” was ratified by the Taliban’s Justice Ministry this week based on a decree by the Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, in 2022.
With 114 pages consisting of 35 articles, the laws seek to impose significant constraints on the population, especially women and girls, with arbitrary and potentially harsh enforcement measures.
The requirements mandate that women wear clothing that completely covers their bodies and faces to avoid temptation and tempting others. Clothing, it says, should not be thin, tight or short.
The laws also require that drivers do not transport women without a male companion present. They require media outlets to adhere to Sharia law and prohibit the publication of images featuring living beings.
For men, the law prohibits them from shaving their beards, skipping prayers, or missing religious fasts.
Many of the requirements have already been enforced by the Taliban’s morality police since the group seized power in the summer of 2021 as the Western-backed republic government collapsed.
The laws will enable the ministry to take a leading role in overseeing personal behavior and to impose penalties such as warnings or arrests if enforcers claim that civilians have violated the regulations.
The ruling authorities have already detained thousands of people for violations of the laws.
Under Taliban rule, women and girls have suffered the most from restrictions described by the UN as “gender apartheid,” which have excluded them from public life.
The UN, rights groups, and many countries have sharply criticized the Taliban’s newly ratified vice and virtue laws.
“We stand together with the women and girls of Afghanistan, and in support of their human rights,” Wong said.
