By Freshta Ghani
A wife is killed by her husband, a daughter not allowed to go to school dies by suicide, a sister is murdered by terrorists – the number of girls and women dying violently in Afghanistan may never be fully known but all indications suggest that they are surging since the Taliban regained power.
Zan Times tracked all accounts of violent female deaths that it could find in media reports. In the first 11 months of 2022, at least 214 women lost their lives due to unnatural deaths.
Out of the 214 female deaths, there were 182 murders reported by the media. The terror group ISIS was named as being responsible for 56 murders, including the 53 women killed in the terrorist attack on the Kaaj education centre in Kabul. And at least 49 girls and women were murdered by their husbands, male relatives or other close family.
“The current alarming rise in femicide can only be explained by the immunity the perpetrators of these murders enjoy in the current situation,” explains Shahla Farid, a former law professor at Kabul University, to Zan Times. Often, the perpetrator is never identified: of the 182 murders of women in 2022, their killers were not identified in 58 cases reported by the media.
The Taliban are reported to be responsible for 19 murders of women that were documented by the media. Given the restrictions imposed by the Taliban, including media censorship and the shuttering of nearly half of all media outlets since the regime took power in August 2021, experts assume the femicide numbers reported in the press could be a severe undercount.
The violence comes after the Taliban dismantled all legal, and institutional support for victims and survivors of domestic violence, including the ministry of women’s affairs and the Independent Human Rights Commission, thus wiping out systems that tracked and helped women dealing with violence, including the shelter system.
As well as murders, at least 32 cases of suicide of women have reported on the media Given the circumstances in the country, the media censorship, the disruption that media and has faced as a result of repression and the crises in general this is only a small of number of the real number of femicide and suicide that has made to media.
The suicide rate for women has skyrocketed since the Taliban regained power and imposed restrictions on women’s ability to work and take part in society. Women need to be accompanied by a close male relative to do everyday tasks, such as buying food or going for a walk. Their situation is so desperate that the United Nations estimates at least one or two women die by suicide every day in Afghanistan.
Atia FarAzar has contributed to this report.
