It is a common observation on the streets of Kabul that girls and women waiting for a bus or taxi are continuously teased and disturbed by drivers and pedestrians. Such manner-less people whistle on them, use abusive language against them and in some cases, they even throw something on them. Such scenes of eve-teasing are not new in almost all the big cities of the world but the way our society has deteriorated in this regard is an alarming sign of the sharp deterioration of our moral and ethical standards and norms of civility.

Kabul also has the large number of girl students in its schools and majority of these girls walk to schools from their homes. Teasing of school girls has also considerably increased and now they feel scared to come out of their homes and walk to school. It is a common scene that large number of vandals and other similar men gather outside girls’ schools before the school time finishes and tease the girls who walk to their homes or wait outside the school for their vans or public transport. In such circumstances, girls are afraid to go to school and other institutes. Parents of girls are also much concerned about this but they don’t know what to do. Some of them accompany them to their institutes while there are also present some girls who have quit their institutes.

The biggest problem is the lack of activism by different stakeholders of this problem. From school and university side, there has never been any serious action against those who stand outside the institutes and tease the girls. From common public, no taxi driver has been admonished or threatened who continuously use abusive language against the daughters of our society. So-called NGOs and organizations that claim to work for the rights of women have never come up with any feasible solution to solve this burning problem. Whenever police chief of city is contacted in this regard, he repeats his claim in these words, ‘Police is very serious in this regard and we are working to solve this problem.’ Till today, the words of police chief have not changed and neither have the conditions for the girls of capital. And when we talk on a broader scale, we have seen nothing from any parliamentary committee or the concerned ministry.

Once, shouting and using abusive language against women was considered very bad and thus such events were also unusual but with the increasing number of such incidents, people are getting used to it and whenever there is any such event, people rely on smiling only and this approach of people has really motivated those who like to tease the girls. If this problem goes unchecked, we will be committing one of the most serious crimes of our history and all those responsible for checking this situation will have to face its accountability. It should also be kept in mind that this fire will one day reach to our homes as well and we will have to think about our own daughters and sisters. It is necessary that all of us should perform our responsibility in this regard considering all the girls of city as one of our own sisters or daughters.