Taliban’s reign of terror against Afghan women must unite Labour and Tory MPs

This week is International Women’s Week. It’s a chance for us to highlight and discuss women’s equality, both here in the UK and around the world.

We are adamant that the plight of women in Afghanistan should concern us all. We sat in Parliament and watched in horror as the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021. Since then, the situation for women and girls there has deteriorated dramatically.

They have been banned from parks, gyms, beauty salons, barred from most forms of employment and even appearing in windows. Females have been banned from training as midwives and girls are not taught beyond primary school level. Women’s voices have been banned from being heard, even in prayer.

There are shocking cases of women killed for standing up for their rights, like the former Afghan MP, Mursal Nabizada, who was killed in Kabul in 2023.

Just last week we heard that a British couple, Peter and Barbie Reynolds, have been arrested for apparently teaching parenting skills to mothers over the age of thirty.

As Parliamentarians, we feel we have an obligation to raise awareness about the unconscionable and brutal oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Britain has a very deep and complex relationship with Afghanistan. The final withdrawal of troops in 2021 can’t signify the end of our role and indeed responsibility of improving the lives of people there.

We are therefore pleased to see that Britain has joined a group of countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands in supporting a case at the International Court of Justice bringing proceedings against the Taliban for gender-discrimination.

More needs to be done across all political levers; we will need strong cross-party consensus to ensure we get this right. That is why we intend to approach this on a non-partisan basis. We need to work hard in Parliament to ensure that the horrific plight of women and girls in Afghanistan is not ignored.

Government scrutiny is one mechanism that needs to be used, but that alone won’t be enough.

Events like the ICC Champions Trophy Match between Afghanistan and England last week should never have gone ahead. The International Cricket Council’s own regulations require test nations to fund and support women’s cricket. The Prime Minister recently urged them to deliver on its own rules. As the international body they have a responsibility to ensure that nations comply with their own rules, and to act when they do not.

Sport has an extraordinary power to bring people together, but it can also be used to deliver a strong message and exert pressure regarding wider social injustices. England and Afghanistan are united in our love of cricket. Calling stumps on that game would have made very clear that we strongly oppose the Taliban’s brutal repression of women and girls. Critically, it would start making men in Afghanistan realise that in order to play a role in international sporting events, the Taliban must stop treating women so atrociously.

On Wednesday, we will host a roundtable to discuss what Parliamentarians can do to help. Make no mistake, this is going to be an issue that won’t be resolved overnight. The fate of women and girls in Afghanistan will require global co-operation, but that can start here in Westminster.

We will need to work with our international partners to make real progress; harnessing our strong relationships with our allies in the Islamic world to send a very clear message to the Taliban that they cannot be allowed to treat women and girls so barbarically.

In 2021, as Kabul fell to the Taliban, the West failed Afghan women and girls. By coming together and standing up for Afghan women and girls, we can ensure that our enduring legacy in the country is not the erosion of the rights of half the Afghan population.

But at the very heart of all we do in Parliament, we must be guided by our mission: to improve the plight of young women and girls in Afghanistan who appear to be a long away from the basic rights, freedoms and liberties we all enjoy.