By RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
September 4, 2023

A group of Afghan women’s rights activists have launched a hunger strike in Germany to protest against the policies of the ruling Taliban that limit the rights and freedoms of Afghan women.

The hunger strikers, who have set up camp in the German city of Cologne, want the Taliban’s policies against women to be internationally recognized as “gender apartheid.”

After returning to power two years ago, the hard-line Islamist group has banned women from education and from working in most economic sectors. It has also imposed strict restrictions on their movement and how they can appear in public.

In the latest prohibitions, the Taliban has banned women from public parks and closed women-only parks.

“We want the ongoing gender apartheid in Afghanistan to be formally recognized as such,” Tamana Zaryab Paryani, one of the protesting women, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

Paryani, who noted her state of health was “not really good,” said they decided to launch the strike three days ago after hundreds of protests inside Afghanistan and internationally failed to produce any results.

“We wanted the discrimination [against women] to end, but it didn’t happen,” she added.

In a July report, UN experts said that the situation of girls and women in Afghanistan was the worst in the world and added that systematic restrictions on women and girls could amount to “gender apartheid.”

“Our protest also aims to secure the release of political prisoners in Afghanistan,” said Fatima Zahra, another protester in Cologne.

She said that they want all financial support for the Taliban to end.

“The Taliban [leaders’] trips to other countries need to end because most of them are already on [terrorism] blacklists,” she told Radio Azadi.

In a statement last month, Sima Bahous, the executive director of UN Women, declared the Taliban policies to be gender apartheid.

“They have created a system founded on the mass oppression of women that is rightly and widely considered gender apartheid,” she said.

Bahous said that since returning to power, the Taliban “has imposed the most comprehensive, systematic, and unparalleled assault on the rights of women and girls” through “more than 50 edicts, orders, and restrictions.”

The Taliban, however, has so far resisted all international and domestic pressure calling for a change in their policies toward women.

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