Afghanistan wants to erase women, says Brazilian Doctors Without Borders agent

Over the nearly 12 months she spent in Afghanistan, Rio de Janeiro lawyer Renata Viana, 45, saw Afghan women gradually being excluded from life in the country. First, the Taliban, which regained power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of American troops, forced women to wear the hijab, a traditional Islamic veil. A few months later, they could only go out in the street wearing a burqa or veils that cover the entire face. But, preferably, women should not even leave the house, guided the fundamentalist regime.

Girls over the age of 11 have not been able to return to school after the pandemic, and university students have been banned from classrooms. Women were also banned from most public sector jobs and could no longer go to parks, gardens or gyms.

Afghan women lost their right to come and go. Many can’t even shop at the market or get to hospitals because they don’t have a mahram, a male guardian, to accompany them, says Viana, who served as Humanitarian Affairs manager for the NGO Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan until last month.

“The Afghan government wants to erase women from society”, says the lawyer, who has been with MSF for six years. She has worked in countries in very difficult situations, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, South Sudan and Haiti. But Afghanistan was what impacted her the most. “It’s as if women were being eliminated from life in the country; they don’t have access to health, education or work, basic human rights.”

The Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue is the body in charge of overseeing whether Afghans follow Islamic law, sharia, as interpreted by the Taliban. The agency determined that any woman traveling a distance greater than 75 km or leaving the country needs a guardian – who can be a brother, father, husband or nephew, but necessarily a man.

In practice, the restrictions are much greater. In the more conservative areas of the country, women suffer intimidation and even violence if they go alone to the market or to a doctor’s appointment.

“Many families are composed only of women, because the men are refugees in other countries or have died in frequent armed conflicts”, says Viana. “These women are sometimes unable to leave the house or are very scared, they run the risk of suffering violence because they are unaccompanied.” After decades of war, there are an estimated 2 million widows in Afghanistan.

The mahram requirement makes it difficult for women to access medical care. In general, Afghan patients arrive at hospitals in a very serious condition, because they always put off seeking help. For women it is even worse, because they depend on the goodwill of a companion – when there is one.

Transport to the hospital is one of the main barriers. With gender segregation in place, women cannot be in the same environment as men. But how to make this separation in the shared cars and motor rickshaws that are used by many Afghans? Some women end up having to pay for all the seats themselves so they don’t have anyone sitting next to them. It’s one more thing that increases the cost for an Afghan woman to leave her home.

How do the few Afghan women who still have jobs manage to get to work? What if her husband also works and cannot accompany her? Some are forced to give up their jobs. “We talked to many Afghan employees here; many take risks and leave unaccompanied, because they really need the job,” says Viana. “Even in regions that are not so conservative, women are stopped and interrogated for going out alone. The Taliban advocates that women should only leave the house in emergency situations.”

In hospitals, there is still some flexibility in gender segregation because there is a clear limitation in the availability of female labor. “But there is already a lot of pressure to be 100% separate – women can only be assisted by doctors and nurses”, says the carioca. “If that happens, it will be a tragedy.”

There simply aren’t enough female doctors, and the trend is only going to get worse, as women have been banned from high school and university.

In December, the Taliban tightened their grip even further by banning Afghan women from working in NGOs. The entities employ most of the few women who find work in a country where unemployment reaches 25%.

According to a survey by UN Women, 94% of organizations had to partially or completely suspend their operations because they cannot operate without local employees – the restriction does not extend to foreigners. Without Afghan women, NGOs cannot reach children and women. The country depends on foreign aid and, without the third sector, it could collapse.

After the Taliban began to break their promises to respect human rights, many foreign donors also withdrew financial aid. Now, this money only reaches Afghanistan through the entities. According to United Nations data, at least 25 million Afghans depend on humanitarian aid to survive.

The ban on Afghan employees has not yet reached the health centers and hospitals where Médecins Sans Frontières works. The regime made an informal exception for health-related NGOs. But it is not known for how long.

“Today 51% of our employees in the medical area are women”, says Viana. “If these discussions expand, we’re going to find ourselves in a quandary: How are we going to function? Are we only going to assist men?”