Baranyai: Canada plays role in giving Afghan women hope

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There is an Afghan proverb: “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.” It’s a lovely, life-affirming perspective. These days, unfortunately, the operative word in that proverb is “He.”

For girls and women in Afghanistan, suffocating under ever-more repressive restrictions, hope is in very short supply.

Under a vice and virtue law imposed by the Taliban in August, the lives of women and girls have shrunk to a whisper of their former selves. They are no longer permitted to gather in prayer. Parks are off-limits. They are forbidden to laugh, sing or raise their voices in public. They can be punished for looking directly at a man.

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An archaic proverb dictates children should be seen and not heard; modern Afghan women are meant to be neither.

These latest indignities have fallen upon half the population who, during the past three years, already have seen their freedom of movement limited, their role in public life reduced, and most importantly, their education denied. One of the Taliban’s first actions, upon seizing power in 2021, was to end schooling for girls beyond sixth grade.

Such a ban is unique in the world, according to UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett. Taliban leaders have insisted – for three years now – the ban is temporary, and girls can return to school when education is aligned with (their interpretation of) Islamic law. Any hope the regime would make good on its word has been snuffed out by the latest restrictions.

At first, women marched in force to protest the loss of their freedoms; their determination was met with brutality. Some described punishments so humiliating, they say they are no longer the same person. The marches have stopped. Outdoor protests are almost nonexistent. However, some activists have found a voice posting videos of themselves (with their faces covered) singing songs about freedom.

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Afghan women are being “basically erased from society,” Bennett says, and the issue is getting too little international attention. He also worries about the effects of women’s repression on boys. As he told CBC’s Rosemary Barton: “If boys grow up with no strong female role models and the kind of ideology to which they’re being exposed, what kind of men are they going to grow into?”

The special rapporteur was in Canada last month on a six-day visit. He came bearing a simple but revolutionary idea: What if every Afghan woman and girl were automatically recognized as a refugee?

The approach is gaining traction. Refugee claims have been approved in several Scandinavian nations after the European Court of Justice ruled last year, under the repressive regime, simply being Afghan and female are sufficient grounds for asylum.

Bennett also praised Canada’s leadership in pursuing a dispute with Afghanistan under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Afghanistan ratified the international convention, without reservation, in 2003. Canada is now working jointly with Australia, Germany and the Netherlands on the unprecedented effort to hold a nation to account for its persecution of women, before the international court at The Hague.

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The dispute is between nations, rather than governments; it does not confer legitimacy on the Taliban, which has not been recognized by any nation as Afghanistan’s government. In a bleak reality shrouded by darkness, it is a glimmer of hope there may be justice for Afghanistan’s women and girls.

“With every tightening of the screw, the tyrant makes our hope more precise,” Anne Michaels wrote in her Giller Prize-winning novel, Held. “And nothing enrages a tyrant more than hope.”

write.robin@baranyai.ca

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