Dear John, 

I am reaching out to discuss an urgent and distressing situation that has unfolded in Afghanistan this week.

Since the Taliban takeover three years ago, life for women has become unimaginably difficult. They have been systematically excluded from public life. Access to education for women and girls has been completely stripped away, their movements outside the home limited, and a strict dress code imposed.

But the situation has worsened this week. The Taliban announced a new ‘Vice and Virtue Order’, a set of strict regulations which dictates public behavior, dress, and social interactions, particularly targeting women. Under these new laws, women have been banned from speaking, singing, or reciting poetry (or the Quran) in public. It even includes them being overheard in public from inside their homes. 

Women must also completely veil themselves from head to toe in thick material, to avoid the risk of leading men into 'temptation'. Men, by comparison, have been instructed to cover their bodies too but only from their navel to their knees. 

Such severe restrictions are aimed at silencing women, making them increasingly invisible from public life. Women ‘suspected’ of breaching the new laws can be detained and punished ‘in a manner deemed appropriate’, by the Taliban.