KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – A top UN official has condemned the enactment of a new morality law by Taliban’s leadership that imposes extensive restrictions on personal freedom and lifestyle, particularly for gender-based limitations.
“The “morality law” recently promulgated by the de facto authorities in Afghanistan further restricts human rights and freedoms, particularly of women,” The UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo said in a post on X.
“This is unconscionable. If maintained, the law can only impede Afghanistan’s return to the international fold.”
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 regulations enforce strict limitations on women, requiring them to cover their faces and bodies in public and forbidding them from speaking out. This comes amid a broader pattern of draconian rules that have effectively erased women and girls from public life.
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 law has drawn widespread outrage and criticism.
In a statement, Roza Otunbayeva, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of UNAMA, described the law as a troubling vision for Afghanistan’s future. She emphasized that it grants moral inspectors discretionary powers to intimidate and detain individuals based on vague and broad lists of infractions.
She highlighted that the international community has been trying to engage constructively with the ruling authorities, with the hope of seeing Afghanistan progress toward peace and prosperity, where all citizens have rights and are not merely subjects to be controlled. The increased restrictions on people’s rights and the climate of fear will make this goal harder to achieve.
Penny Wong, Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, condemned the Taliban’s efforts to silence the voices of women and girls in Afghanistan through a post on X. She highlighted that the new decree on vice and virtue prohibits women from speaking out and appearing in public without covering their faces.
