The Free Women’s Movement (Tevgera Jinên Azad, TJA) released a statement regarding the restrictions imposed on women by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The TJA statement on Monday reads as follows:
“In Afghanistan, women’s right to life, to education, to health, and to public existence is systematically targeted through prohibitions. The exclusion from universities, the denial of access to medical education, the removal of women writers’ works from curricula, and the prohibition of public visibility are not only violations of individual rights, but an explicit usurpation of the collective future of society.
Although attacks on women take different forms in different geographies, their essence is the same. The systematic pressure that seeks to sever women from society, from life, and from a free future is met with resistance in Afghanistan; this resistance is an inseparable part of the uninterrupted women’s freedom struggle stretching from Rojava to Europe, from Latin America to the Middle East. The prohibitions imposed on Afghan women are not mere local administrative regulations; they are rooted in historical relations of exploitation, in patriarchal state violence, and in global inequalities.
As TJA, within the struggle we wage with the strength of the women’s freedom paradigm, we regard solidarity with Afghan women as a principled and historical responsibility.
Our call to the international community:
– The United Nations and all relevant international mechanisms must recognize the restrictive policies imposed on women in Afghanistan as a crime against humanity and must assume their responsibility to adopt binding and decisive measures against them.
– Regional governments and diplomatic institutions must urgently put into effect effective pressure and monitoring mechanisms to secure women’s access to fundamental rights.
– To expand the international women’s struggle, to unite our voices, and to expose the patriarchal mentality in order to make a free and equal life possible for all women is a historical responsibility for us all.
Just as in Rojava women became the vanguard of the struggle for freedom against the patriarchal mentality, today the resistance rising in Afghanistan is part of the same line of freedom, the continuation of the same word. The women’s freedom struggle continues to advance and grow with a historical memory and a transformative courage that transcends borders and forms of domination. We know that without women’s liberation there can be no liberation of society.”