The Taliban's War on Women: A Health and Human Rights Crisis in Afghanistan

The extent to which the Taliban regime has violated the human rights of Afghan women is unparalleled in recent history. This report contains compelling evidence of how a society in which women played a prominent role in the health professions, in government, and in teaching, has been replaced by one where: women are regularly and brutally beaten for walking on the street without a male chaperone or without a garment (burqua) that covers their bodies from head to toe; many women must beg because they are largely forbidden from working; women cannot obtain health care from many facilities and cannot be examined by a male doctor without a chaperone, and schools for women and girls have closed their doors with the exception of Qu'ranic training for girls under eight. Such discrimination and the suffering it causes constitute an affront to the dignity and worth of Afghan women and humanity as a whole.