On Saturday 8 March 2025, International Women’s Day, a group of women will assemble in Norwich city centre with candles, flowers and homemade placards bearing slogans like, “We Hear Your Voices”, “Let Girls Learn”, and “Afghan Women Deserve Better”.
A series of vigils through the year
In December 2024, the Women’s Rights Network (WRN) organised silent vigils to be held every 4-6 weeks in towns and cities across the country to highlight the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan; to hear their voices, silenced in their own country; and to show the women of Afghanistan that they have not been forgotten. The series of vigils will culminate in a mass vigil in London later this year.
“In Afghanistan, all we are allowed to do is breathe.” (Afghan woman)
During the vigils, people listen to readings of the words of women and girls who they have never met, living in a country most of us have never visited, translated from languages that are not widely known. They take photographs to be shared on social media, stand in silence for two minutes in solidarity, and then disperse.
Supporters unable to attend in person share selfies with similar placards and the hashtag #AfghanWomenDeserveBetter, or send them to Women’s Rights Network Afghanistan. The hope is that those women and girls, who are still able to access the internet, will know they are remembered.
Nathalie Kail, one of the members of Women’s Rights Network organising the vigil in Norwich, explains: “It’s unbearable to see women and girls in Afghanistan being stripped of all their human rights and treated so terribly by the men in the Taliban regime and this because of their sex.”
After August 2021 in Afghanistan
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, a constant stream of decrees has removed the rights of women and girls to learn, to earn, to move outside their homes, to speak where others outside their families can hear them, or even to stand near windows. Women cannot ask for charity in the streets, though many widows are forced into begging by poverty and the prohibition on women working. Women are regularly arrested, beaten or even, reportedly, raped.
One thousand two hundred and sixty-eight days before the 8 March vigil in Norwich, the Taliban closed girls’ schools across Afghanistan, sacking all the women teachers and sending the girls home in tears. Eight hundred and nine days before this year’s International Women’s Day, women students and lecturers were barred from universities and colleges.
Radio Begum, a women-led radio station putting out educational and informative programmes to support home learning in a country with a high illiteracy rate even before the current regime took over, was closed down. The reason – a prohibition on women’s voices being heard by men, even at a long distance. Some of the women broadcasters have fled or gone into hiding. Suicides are up in a country where 80% of completed suicides are by women and girls.
It was not always like this
Women remember how different their lives were as young girls – not very different from ours – they went to the cinema with their parents; women had jobs; studied at university, and enjoyed relative freedom. But all that changed when the Taliban came to power in 1996.
“I honestly hope and wish none of you face this kind of situation and never become disappointed like us.” (University student now forced to stay home).
Women across the world have watched the situation unfold in horror, not knowing what help they can give or how to support those facing continuing and escalating attacks on their rights and life chances. Stella, a member of Norwich Women’s Rights Network says:
“In 2025 in Afghanistan, a cat may look at a king but a woman may not. They cannot go out without being accompanied by a male guardian; they must not let their voices be heard in public; they must be covered. It is so important that we not forget the women and girls of Afghanistan and we must demonstrate that they are not forgotten.”
The implications for women living under Taliban rules
Banning women from studying to become doctors, nurses or midwives, and forbidding those already qualified from practising, is likely to have an appalling effect. Afghanistan already had one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world before these restrictions were brought in. Local tradition and the veto of male relatives prevents most women from consulting male health professionals.
Without skilled and qualified women to turn to, more women and their babies will die, more women and babies will be permanently injured in childbirth. “And when we refer to ‘women’, it’s important to remember that over a third of girls in Afghanistan are married before their 18th birthday,” says Carole Brown, a local women’s rights activist, “so we’re also talking about girls.”
I will never forget the day after the Taliban took over. In the morning, even though I had woken up, I still thought I was asleep, the world had changed for me, everything was destroyed, all the dreams and all the efforts I had made in the past few years had no meaning anymore. (28 year-old woman)
Things may not always be like this
Unconfirmed reports claim that the families of leading Taliban figures may be less affected by these bans, as they can get travel permits and have the money for wives and daughters to seek medical care in neighbouring countries – but only if their husbands or fathers permit them.
It is also reported that a senior Taliban member fled the country after making a speech in which he argued that it was “un-Islamic” to “close the gates of knowledge” to girls, simply on the grounds of their female sex. Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, left after stating at a graduation ceremony that the decree was “unjust to 20 million people”, the estimated female population of the country.
“I want the world to know that Afghan girls are resilient and hopeful. We desire the same opportunities as girls everywhere – to learn, grow, and to contribute to our communities; we are voices that need to be heard. It is crucial for international community to support us in our fight for education and equality. We want to be seen, heard, and empowered to shape our own futures. We never give up.” (Kubra)
For my part, as well as teaching refugees in this country, I also taught for six years in a women’s college in the Middle East, and I remember how eager my students there were for learning – a window on the world and a chance at life. It’s important not to shrug this off as a minor tragedy in a distant country of which we know little. Women’s rights are human rights the world over.
One thing we can conclude is that, if it’s true that ‘the arc of history bends towards justice’, as Martin Luther King said, it isn’t a smooth or an inevitable curve. Women’s rights can be curtailed or denied – and they are! The war on women is international: Afghanistan under the Taliban is just the most obvious hotspot at the moment.
These quotes, and others from Afghan women are read out at each vigil. The vigils will continue around Norfolk, to culminate in a mass vigil in July. The Norfolk and Norwich branch of the Women’s Rights Network, a non-partisan, non-party-affiliated human rights organisation which welcomes women of any religion and none, is planning further vigils at locations around Norfolk to highlight the situation in Afghanistan, and to remind us all that Afghan Women and Girls Deserve Better.
