On September 5, 2024, photojournalist Kiana Hayeri and human rights lawyer Mélissa Cornet, exhibited a six-month documentation of the regressed state of women’s rights in Afghanistan. Entitled No Woman’s Land, the work was featured at the international photojournalism festival Visa pour l’Image.
In a social media post from her time spent in Afghanistan, Hayeri said: “In Afghanistan during the 90s, many women were stripped of their rights under the first Taliban regime and confined to their homes. Today, they watch with heavy hearts as their own daughters face similar challenges.” After two decades of war, the U.S. officially cut ties with Afghanistan in September 2021, leaving the country in the hands of the previously ousted power, the Taliban. By that time, the war against women had already begun.
In August 2021, women were advised to leave home only when absolutely necessary. Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in an address to reporters that the Taliban soldiers were “not trained [in] how to deal with women.” A strict dress code was reimplemented. Women were ordered to ditch their blouses and jeans and return to orthodox garments that were dark in color and encompassed the body entirely. A niqab (veiled the face with a thin slit at eye level) or burqa (veiled the face with mesh fabric at eye level) was a requirement. Gender segregation was introduced into primary education classrooms and girls were barred from secondary education. In some provinces, the cut off age for girls education was grade six, and in some provinces the age was as young as 10.
The practice of arranged marriages returned where girls as young as 12 years old could be married off to Taliban soldiers. On May 2, Hayeri shared an excerpt on social media from her publication When Cages Fly, telling the story of a young girl named Nafas and her marriage: “The scar where Nafas’s husband stabbed her in the back with a knife was still visible when she lifted up her clothes. She was married off at the age of 12, despite pleading with her parents that she was too young. Shortly after her 15th birthday, Nafas begged her parents for a divorce. In response, they told her: ‘A woman enters her husband’s house wearing white and leaves his house wearing white,’ referring to the bridal dress and the white shroud that Muslims use as a burial sheet.” Nafas shot her husband and ended up in Herat Women’s Prison in Afghanistan, his first wife thanked her.
On September 17, 2021, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs—established shortly after the Taliban was ousted—was disbanded, and the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (morality police) took their place. This came after temporary bans were placed late August barring women from the workplace, and in some cases, advising them to send in male relatives as replacements, no education necessary.
Kabul University closed its doors to women later that year for students and teachers alike. By early 2022, gender segregation was issued in universities that remained open to women. By late 2022, women were officially barred from all public and private universities. Those already in possession of an education were barred from most professions under the premise that the material should be too difficult for them to understand.
Women could not travel without a male guardian. They could not enter health facilities as a patient or a doctor without a male guardian. They were barred from entering public parks, baths, and gymnasiums. Establishments all across Afghanistan closed their doors to women. “To give some context, three years ago an Afghan woman could technically decide to run for president. Now, she may not even be able to decide when to go and buy groceries,” said Afghanistan’s UN Women country representative Alison Davidian in early August of this year..
Women could run for president. They could go to school and choose any profession they pleased. They could wear whatever they wanted and express themselves through fashion. They could fight for their rights without fearing for their lives, but today they are afraid. “Today they are not even allowed to have their voices heard in public,” said Mélissa Cornet at Visa pour l’Image. Hayeri and Cornet, through their work, have provided viewers with a visual representation of the strife of Afghani women who continued to be silenced by the oppressive situation in which they live.
