The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently released finding that rank Afghanistan as one of the three hungriest nations in the world, along with Somali and Haiti. The FAO found that 70% of the Afghan population is undernourished, living without 26% of their basic food requirements. The Taliban’s oppressive system of gender apartheid has made the situation worse by enforcing laws that completely violate women’s human rights, make women the most vulnerable group inside Afghanistan and make the delivery of humanitarian aid extremely difficult. The Taliban’s gender apartheid in Afghanistan the 1996 edict that banned women from employment. More recently, in August 2000, Taliban officials ordered the closing of “widow bakeries” operated by the United Nations Word Food Program which employed a number of Afghan women and provided bread at subsidized prices for the country’s poorest women and their families feeding almost 270,000 people every day.
The ruling Taliban, who now control nearly 95% of Afghanistan, oppress women through a brutal system of gender apartheid that has banished women from the work force, closed schools to girls, limited women’s access to medical treatment, expelled women from universities, and prohibited women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative. The Feminist Majority Foundation’s Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan works to fully and permanently restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls.
