(Bloomberg) -- New laws by Afghanistan’s Taliban government, which include banning women from speaking or showing their faces in public, sparked global condemnation and could potentially jeopardize the regime’s efforts to gain legitimacy.
The Taliban, which took over power three years ago during the chaotic US withdrawal, published a slew of new “vice and virtue” laws last week in the official gazette of Afghanistan. The laws required women to conceal their faces and bodies with thick clothing to avoid tempting men.
Women are also not allowed to let their voices be heard in public, including from singing or reading aloud, and are forbidden from looking directly at men who aren’t relatives.
The “morality” law is “unconscionable,” Rosemary A. DiCarlo, United Nations’ under secretary general for political and peacebuilding affairs, said in a post on X, adding that, if maintained, the law “can only impede Afghanistan’s return to the international fold.”
The Taliban has established limited diplomatic links with some countries, including Russia and China, but even those countries have not formally recognized its government.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed rejected the criticism in a statement saying “concerns raised by various parties will not sway the Islamic Emirate from its commitment to upholding and enforcing Islamic Sharia law.”
The laws are based on “extreme, arbitrary, and rigid interpretations” of Islamic Sharia, Rawadari, an Afghan human rights organization, said in a statement.
Millions of women in the country were already barred from education or taking jobs. A UN estimate showed that the curbs on working women could cut Afghanistan’s GDP by 5%, or $1 billion.
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