Pew International Journalism Program

Taliban Era Restrictions of Women Remain in Force in Afghanistan, Says Human Rights Activist

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Fall 2002 Pew Fellow

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2002 -- The Western media may be celebrating the liberation of women in Afghanistan with stories about them crowding makeup counters and beauty parlors. But a human rights activist who just returned from a trip there said that there has far less change than outsiders may have been led to believe.

Zama Coursen-Neff of Human Rights Watch said authorities are still enforcing many of the old rules about women not being allowed to work and being allowed to travel only with a male relative. Speaking at a Pew Fellows seminar, she also said there are reports that the so-called "vice and virtue" squads patrol the streets once again, chastising women who wear makeup and lecturing them on Islamic behavior.

"The burqa was a bit of a red herring," said Coursen-Neff about the much-publicized trend of some women casting aside the previously required head-to-toe garb for less constrictive clothing. In contrast to the new freedom the shedding of the burqa may connote, "many of the Taliban-era edicts are still in place."

The one area in which the country has made progress, Coursen-Neff said, is in education; girls are now allow to attend school. But she said that's only a small victory given that the government and companies are uncomfortable hiring them for jobs upon graduation.

Coursen-Neff spent a month in the country's capital Kabul and the western part of the country interviewing more than 30 women, as well as various local officials and other experts, about human rights changes since the end of the Taliban rule. She will publish a report about her trip later this week.

Human Rights Watch also has been researching "bonded" child labor, where the youngsters work in what amounts to indentured servitude to pay off debt or a loan. It isn't uncommon for the youngsters to be bonded for months or even years.

"If you do the math, the child is working for pennies or less than pennies a day," Coursen-Neff said.

In one study, the group found that children working in silk factories in India were subject to harsh physical conditions, working up to 12 hours a day, with threads cutting open their fingers, boiling water burning their legs and hands, and dead worms causing infection.