It’s a Girl!

It’s a girl!

Being a woman is considered a sin, even a crime, in Afghanistan.

More than two years ago, the Taliban, in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law ‘Sharia’, banned and deprived almost 3.5 million Afghan teenage girls of education. The Taliban defied the resistance and made matters worse; last year they have made the full face veil mandatory in public and have not only excluded women and girls from higher education, they are also prohibeted to travel alone, are banned from parks, public baths and barred from most jobs. The rights of women in Afghanistan are not respected, therefor they are not protected against violence, forced (child) marriages and rape. One of the obvious consequences of the education ban is the lack of training of aspiring healthcare professionals. Afghan women cannot see male doctors. So how can Afghan women, in a strictly gender-segregated society, get the most basic healthcare if there are no female professionals to treat them? Because women and girls are made invisible, they are seen as the lost generation. This year Afghanistan has been declared the worst place in the world to be a woman!

5-Color silkscreen print and acrylic pencil on handcrafted Japanese Gampi paper