Security forces have broken up a demonstration of Afghan women in Kabul who were protesting the forced closure of beauty salons.
According to media reports, the security forces used fire hoses and shot their guns into the air to break up a demonstration of dozens of women.
Earlier this month, the Taliban announced beauty salons, which are traditionally safe spaces for women, would be forced to close across the country. Beauty salons are often run by women, and can be the only source of income for households.
The closure of beauty salons is the latest measure imposed by the Taliban in its erasure of women from public life in Afghanistan.
Since rising to power in 2021, the Taliban have enforced a number of measures that have prohibited women and girls from participating in many parts of everyday life.
In a joint report released last month and presented to the UN Human Rights Council, a group of experts said the situation in Afghanistan had severely restricted the rights of women and girls and suffocated every dimension of their lives.
“Women and girls in Afghanistan are experiencing severe discrimination that may amount to gender persecution – a crime against humanity – and be characterised as gender apartheid, as the de facto authorities appear to be governing by systemic discrimination with the intention to subject women and girls to total domination,” the experts said.
The report said more attention from the international community and the UN is needed to be directed to the widespread discrimination against women and girls in Afghanistan.
“Women and girls have no recourse to justice, and very limited access to female lawyers, who have not been issued licenses unlike their male colleagues,” the report’s authors said.
Since the Taliban’s takeover, women and girls above primary school age have been banned from receiving an education, and women are largely prohibited to participating in the workforce. They are unable to move freely around the country and cannot access many public spaces including parks and recreational spaces. Women can only access care provided by female doctors.
The report also said that women and girl who have been subjected to experiences of gender-based violence are being left behind with a lack of access to support services.
“Unless the restrictions are reversed rapidly, the stage may be set for multiple preventable deaths that could amount to an evolving femicide,” it said.