KABUL, October 3 (IPS) – After the Taliban returned to energy in Afghanistan, they banned women’ schooling past the sixth grade. Human rights teams say the coverage is a significant driver of the rise in underage and compelled marriages involving Afghan women.
Zarghona, 42, a widowed mom of 4, says her three underage daughters had been taken from her and forcibly married to former classmates. After faculties and universities for ladies had been closed, all three daughters, who hoped to turn into nurses and midwives, had been disadvantaged of schooling and confined to their house.
“To forestall my daughters from turning into depressed, I despatched them to a madrasa (non secular college) close to our home, on the recommendation of neighbors,” Zarghona says. They acquired non secular schooling for a 12 months, however issues quickly started to vary.
“Sooner or later, a girl got here to our home below the pretext of renting a room, and after that, the frequency of her visits elevated. I regularly realized that she was focusing on my daughters.”
Sooner or later a Taliban recruiter, a classmate of theirs on the madrassa, adopted the women to her home and demanded the 2 youthful daughters as wives to his brothers.
“After I rejected their proposal, they informed me, both I marry off my daughters to the older males or they might hurt my son, they threatened”.
Beneath strain, Zarghona says she was pressured to consent to the marriages with out her daughters’ approval.
“For me and my daughters, the marriage was not a celebration, it was a mourning ceremony” Zarghona lamented, including, “I had no alternative however to give up.”
The marriage was not a proper Afghan ceremony, however quite a easy non secular ceremony carried out by the Mullahs. Her oldest daughter was not forcibly married.
Afterwards, Zarghona was barred from seeing her daughters. She mentioned cash needed to be secretly despatched to them by pay as you go cellular transfers. Life grew to become even more durable for the daughters.
“Every day got here with extra restrictions on how they dressed and the place they might go. I couldn’t defend them, and my coronary heart was by no means at peace, she mentioned, unhappy and embittered.
The older of the 2 daughters is now 19. She already has one youngster and is anticipating one other. The youthful daughter has not but turn into pregnant and due to that she was permitted to see a physician, which additionally enabled Zarghona to satisfy her secretly within the physician’s reception space. She mentioned each had misplaced weight and had been shadows of their former selves. Each had bruises and appeared scared.
Zarghona determined to go to Iran for some time to ease herself from the painful actuality of her daughters’ scenario. However when she heard their cries over the cellphone, she returned to Afghanistan. She says, “Lower than three days after I got here again, they beat me up and my daughters and even locked us inside our house.”
Zarghona provides that she now has no contact along with her daughters and believes their scenario stays crucial. “All doorways for searching for assist are closed to me. The federal government is patriarchal, and no group helps ladies’s rights,” she says.
It’s estimated that the Taliban have enforced over 5,000 pressured marriages over the previous 4 years. 1000’s of women haven’t solely been stripped of their proper to schooling however compelled into marriages over which they’d no alternative.
Human rights organizations and the United Nations have warned that the ban on women’ schooling is fueling home violence, poverty, suicides, pressured marriages, and Afghanistan’s political isolation.
In accordance with current assessments by UNICEF and the World Financial institution, multiple million women have been denied the best to schooling for the reason that Taliban took management of Afghanistan.
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