Dyan Mazurana addresses Taliban’s “vice and virtue” law
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed increasingly oppressive laws, particularly targeting the freedoms of women and girls. A newly enacted “vice and virtue” law represents one of their most repressive measures to date.
In an article in The Conversation, Feinstein Research Director Dyan Mazurana and colleague Sima Samar describe the law, which follows the Taliban’s issuing of more than 100 decrees and directives that violate women’s and girls’ rights under international law and Afghan national law.
The new law seeks to completely silence women in public, prohibiting them from speaking, singing, or praying aloud. The law also attempts to literally erase them from view, ordering women to cover every part of their body and face in public.
The edict suppresses most of women’s political, civil, and human rights guaranteed under international law. And if women resist, it orders the use of violence to repress them.
The authors call upon the international community to respond to this humanitarian crisis and protect the human rights and dignity of women and girls in Afghanistan.
