Disturbing reports are coming from Israel, Afghanistan and Iran where new measures are being taken to deny freedom and gender equality to their women. In a significant development, Israel’s incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party gave its word in its coalition agreement with Far-Right politician Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism faction 26 December that the new government will not ratify the Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women.
It means Jerusalem will not join what is perceived to be the most advanced of all international treaties on the fight against gender-based violence. Countries that accede to the Convention are mandated to legislate strict laws on the prevention of domestic violence, protection of victims, prosecution and policy coordination. The Convention, officially opened for signing in 2011, has, so far, been signed by 45 countries and the European Union. Ironically, Turkey itself withdrew from the agreement last year that led to condemnation from the European Council and the USA. The reservations expressed by Israel’s Far-Right Religious Zionism are in keeping with its agenda against immigration and gender equality. India is not a signatory to this Convention.
The second country in discussion now is the Islamist regime of Iran which has been facing widespread protests by women in different parts of that country for the use of its moral police brutally forcing women to conform to a dress code that tramples on women’s freedom. Women and girls in Iran continue to be treated as second class citizens according to a UN expert report to the Human Rights Council. The report cites domestic violence, thousands of marriages of girls aged between 10 and 14 each year and continuing discrimination against women in law and practice.
As the third country, as international attention is focused on the Russia-Ukraine war, Afghanistan under the Taliban regime has silently and steadily taken its crusade against women to a new level of degradation 16 months after its takeover. It has now shut all Afghan women aspiring for higher education out of the precincts of universities. Nor are the women allowed to work in non-government organisations (NGOs), both domestic and foreign. Already, the women in the country have been robbed of their right to education at high schools, spend time in public gardens, gymnasiums and public baths and go to shops except with a male escort from the family. Under Taliban rule women are free only to have primary level education without opportunities for work. In other words, a medieval world is being sought to be created in Afghanistan where women have been consigned to the home and the hearth under a veil.
What Afghan women had been fearing for several months came true after the Taliban government’s Ministry of Higher Education announced a few days back that the women in the country would be banned from studying at public and private universities “until further notice.” The decision was made by the Taliban government’s cabinet, which has demanded all higher education institutions implement the new order “immediately.” The day after the order was issued women were seen bursting into tears in front of the gates of universities as they were not allowed in by the guards. Women teachers in some cases reportedly argued with the security guards to let them and students into the campus, but they were flatly denied.
All hopes about the Taliban returning to power as a reformed, chastened outfit now lie shattered. Even the worst economic crisis the country is facing appears not to bother the bigoted leadership so much as the shackling of Afghan women with medieval ideas and a skewed interpretation
of religion.
Time is probably ripe for women of the world to seek and carve out a separate country for themselves. It could be a nation that would be green, clean and luscious.