Afghan women suffer greatly and their rights and dignity are violated in one way or another. Despite the fall of Taliban’s regime, women are still threatened and traditional mindsets hold sway in many parts of the country. Their role is restricted within the four walls in Taliban dominated areas. The armed insurgents and tribal groups curtail women’s freedoms on a large scale and desert court is still practiced once in a while in tribal belts.
A report released by Amnesty International (AI) says that civilian casualties and violence against women have increased to a large extent in 2015. Although safeguarding women’s rights was a top priority on the National Unity Government (NUG), Afghan women still live in misery. “The government said this is going to be a good year for women. On the contrary, it was a bad one, because a large number of women were victims of violence,” a member of the Afghan Women’s Network Sonia Aslami is cited as saying. According to her, the government has done nothing so far to punish violators of women’s rights. Thousands of cases of violence against women have been reportedly registered over the past year.
There also lie many cultural barriers for women in our society. An Afghan woman will have an honorable life when she lives without complaining about injustice at the hands of her husband. Often women are made to marry persons against their inner choices.
A woman who keeps silent, despite hearing biting words, foul languages, mental and physical tortures, etc. is a woman of life in ideal Afghan culture.
The erosion of religious values, absence of humanity and decline of moral standards are the great tragedies in our social and individual life. We are deep in cruelty and vice. The current violence taking place against women demonstrates our real characters. Can you ever imagine shedding the blood of one with whom you lived for a long time?
Honor killings are a common form of violence against women across our country.
Women are killed for reasons such as refusing to enter an arranged marriage, being in a relationship that is disapproved by their relatives, attempting to leave a marriage, becoming the victim of rape, dressing in ways which are deemed inappropriate, etc.
Violence against women can occur in both public and private spheres of life and at any time of their life span. Many women are terrified by these threats of violence and this essentially has an impact on their lives that they are impeded to exercise their human rights, for instance, the fear for contribution to the development of their communities socially, economically and politically.
What a mother suffers from, a daughter tends to repeat while upbringing her children, leaving the girls from one generation after the next, deprived of their rights – particularly the rights to getting education. Such circumstances are mainly a consequence of parental dysfunction and inequality and social restrictions. A number of hapless girls take their dreams to the grave with them – the same as their mothers did. In a home, where parents reap off the struggles and sacrifices of their children who are barely adults, girls are entangled in the fear of letting their families down. Female children are not only deprived of their rights, circumstances also force them to mature very early. An entire childhood is lost.
Although with the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghan women have made advances in rights, with millions of girls attending schools and women holding government posts. But with the steady withdrawal of foreign forces and the Taliban’s intensified militancy, there are growing fears that the achievements will be lost. Moreover, the emergence of self-styled Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Afghanistan, has posed further threat to the rights and freedoms of women. Since this group practices strict ideology, it will impose more restriction on them in case of gaining firm foothold in the country.
On the other hand, women’s role is not considered in peace negotiation, which is supposed to take place between the government and the Taliban outfits. Perhaps, the Taliban will not change their minds concerning women and set restrictive preconditions about their rights in the society. So, women’s role must not be disregarded in this case either.
Based on the Constitution of Afghanistan and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in which Afghanistan is committed, one is not supposed to be discriminated on the grounds of their race, sex or color.
Therefore, men and women are endowed with equal rights and dignity. Similarly, they have a set of natural and inalienable rights for being human and no one, including the government, can take away these rights but on the basis of certain law.  
We must end violence committed against women and girls in private and public spheres.
The government is highly responsible to implement the law which supports the women’s rights. Constitutionally, the government will have to “establish an order based on the peoples’ will and democracy; form a civil society void of oppression, atrocity, discrimination as well as violence, based on rule of law, social justice, protecting integrity and human rights, and attaining peoples’ freedoms and fundamental rights.” Thus, violators of women’s rights must be prosecuted and judicial system should practice transparency and impartiality in this regard.