“It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions,” said Roza Otunbayeva, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), on Sunday after the Taliban issued a new set of vice and virtue laws on Wednesday.
These laws include a mandatory veil and face cover and a ban on tight and short clothes, the Associated Press reported.
Additionally, the new laws include a ban on women singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public and a ban on women or men looking at anyone of the opposite gender they are not related to by blood or marriage.
Article 19 of the new laws bans playing music, transporting single female travelers, and mixing of unrelated opposite genders. It also obliges passengers and drivers to pray at select times.
Furthermore, the laws also ban the publication of images of living creatures.
These are the first formal declarations of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in 2021. They are 114 pages long and contain 35 articles. In 2021, the Taliban set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice.”
'The Afghan people deserve much better'
“After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one,” Otunbayeva said.
“The international community has been seeking, in good faith, to constructively engage with the de facto authorities,” the UNAMA official highlighted.
“The world wants to see Afghanistan on the path of peace and prosperity, where all Afghans have a stake in their future, are citizens with rights and not just subjects to be disciplined. Further restricting the rights of the Afghan people and holding them in constant fear will make achieving this goal even harder,” the official noted.
The UNAMA official also stated that there were two positive outcomes of the new laws, which help protect children from sexual abuse. These laws ban the mistreatment of orphans and prohibit the practice of "Bacha Bazi," a pedophilic practice of using young boys for personal entertainment and sexual abuse.
Otunbayeva is scheduled to report to the UN Security Council in mid-September on the situation in Afghanistan.