The world must remember the suffering of Afghan women

On International Women's Day, we must reflect on the injustices facing women in Afghanistan, writes Nazdana Soltanfar.

ON 8 MARCH, every year is marked as International Women's Day (IWD). This day should be celebrated and the circumstances of my compatriots and all women in the world should be explored.

My compatriot women have been under de facto house arrest for more than six months; they have no freedom of speech, no freedom association, no ability to work and provide for themselves. In short, they have no liberty.

Unfortunately, with the incomprehensible political developments of the last six months, women were most vulnerable.

The debt Australia owes the people of Afghanistan

The Australian Government owes a debt to the Afghan people where welcoming 20,000 additional refugees should just be the beginning.

Women have been rendered "the second sex" in all human societies, especially in Afghanistan. After the changes in Afghanistan, women are treated as incomplete members of society.

Yet women are the most powerful members and hardest working people in human societies, who fight day and night with the opposite sex for freedom of thought, opinion, and basic progress. 

But it is still on the minds of the men of this land, especially the ideological extremist groups, that women are not equal, but objects to be subjugated.

There are powerful and militant women in this land who are still trying to create some freedom and at least a voice for their generation to shout out for the right to freedom of work and education. But these calls have not yet received enough global support.

It was thought that women and like-minded people around the world would support us.

Australia must help Afghans deprived of lives, dreams and futures

Afghan law and political science student Nazdana Soltanfar expresses the tragedy of life under the Taliban and calls on Scott Morrison and the Australian Government to do more to assist vulnerable Afghans.

Unfortunately, the silence of our international allies and the world's silence against extremism and discrimination against women in this land is a great tragedy. The women of this land suffer.

The women of this land need universal support to achieve their most basic rights and outdated and repulsive ideas must become unconscionable and unenforceable.

We have the right to education, the right to work and the right to liberty.

Nazdana Soltanfar is a second-year student at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Kabul University, a social, cultural and women's rights activist.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Support independent journalism Subscribe to IA.