Taliban Sending Women Abuse Survivors To Prison For Their Protection: UN

The Taliban in Afghanistan are sending women abuse survivors to prison for their protection, as per a UN report. The survivors' physical and mental health are harmed by the practice, the intergovernmental organisation said, as per a report in BBC. 

According to the report, the Taliban no longer sees the need for state-sponsored women's shelters, hence they have shut them down. Afghanistan has had some of the worst worldwide repression of women's rights due to the Taliban.

Gender-based violence against women and children was known to be widespread even before the Taliban took control of the country, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Since the Taliban took control of the country, 23 women's protection shelters have vanished. 

Taliban representatives informed UNAMA that since women live with their husbands or other male family members, the shelters were not needed. Such shelters, according to them, are "a Western concept". The officials stated that they would demand that the family's male members sign a "commitment" promising not to hurt the female survivor.

The survivor would be taken to prison "for her protection" if she had no male relatives to remain with or if there were any safety concerns. According to UNAMA, this is comparable to how certain drug users and the homeless are kept in Kabul, the nation's capital.

The UNAMA said, "Confining women who are already in a situation of vulnerability in a punitive environment would also likely have a negative impact on their mental and physical health, re-victimisation and put them at risk of discrimination and stigmatisation upon released."

Meanwhile, in the past two years, Taliban authorities have imposed their strict interpretation of Islam, with women bearing the brunt of laws the United Nations has termed "gender apartheid".

In December last year, Taliban officials announced a ban on women from educational institutes and it drew widespread condemnation from foreign governments and the United Nations. "You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice," Minister for Higher Education Neda Mohammad Nadeem said in a letter issued to all government and private universities last year.

The Taliban enforced the restriction, claiming that female students disregarded a stringent dress code and a necessity to be accompanied to and from university campuses by a male relative. The majority of colleges and universities had already implemented gender-specific entrances, classrooms and policies permitting only older men or women professors to teach female students, according to the outlet.

Women in the country have also been banned from going to parks, gyms, fairs, salons and must cover themselves in public. Many have also been removed from their government jobs.