In a welcoming step, the Taliban-led Afghan government has banned forced marriage in the country, stating that women should not be considered “property” and must consent to marriage. It may or may not have been done to appease the world powers but it is a welcome move on the part of the Taliban to take a notable step concerning the rights of Afghan women.
Unfortunately, marriages in most parts of Afghanistan are dictated by custom, more than a woman’s choice. Widows are expected to marry into their late husband’s family, daughters are sold off as investments, and young girls are married well before they are in a mature state to consent.
“Both women and men should be equal,” says a new decree issued in the name of Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada. It emphatically says that women and girls should not be coerced in matrimonial matters, and that a widow has the right to have a share in her husband’s inheritance.
Through the decree, the Taliban have asked the entire government machinery to take “serious actions to enforce women’s rights”. It has ordered the ministries of information and culture to publish material on the rights of women and girls in order to raise general awareness about the significant issue.
For the Afghan Taliban, who have had a poor history with women rights, this decree is certainly quite a change. If the Taliban really are true to their word and mean to implement this decree properly, it can have a huge difference on regressive trends.
By issuing the decree on women’s rights, the Taliban have upheld their promise that they would ensure that mistakes of the previous Taliban regime would not be repeated. This seems like a diplomatic step the Taliban have taken to appease the international community and to convey to the world that they have changed.
As winter comes around, and malnutrition threatens to devastate the Afghan population, Afghanistan urgently requires the release of funds from the international community. This decree gives some hope that international pressure might work and push the Taliban to more cooperation.
