International- The Taliban have banned women from parks in Afghanistan.
- Since the Taliban came to power in August 2021, they have enforced punitive laws restricting women's lives.
Women in Afghanistan have been banned from parks by the Taliban, according to a Reuters report.
A spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mohammad Akif Muhajir, told local media that Afghan women would no longer be permitted to visit parks.
Muhajir said, "For the last 14 or 15 months, we were trying to provide an environment according to Sharia (Islamic law) and our culture for women to go to the parks," he said, according to Reuters.
"Unfortunately, the owners of parks didn't cooperate with us very well, and also, the women didn't observe hijab as was suggested. For now, the decision has been taken that they are banned," he continued.
It was not made clear how long the ban would last.
In May of this year, the Taliban ruled that women must cover their faces in public, with the ideal face covering being the all-encompassing burqa, Insider's Alia Shoaib reported.
Should a woman not abide by these rules, her father or closest male relative will be visited and eventually imprisoned or fired from government jobs.
Since the Taliban seized Kabul in August 2021, they have enforced punitive laws restricting women's lives and activities.
For example, in March, the theocratic group closed girls' high schools and issued orders for girls aged 12-18 to stay home.
The Taliban have also introduced rules limiting women's travel without male chaperones.
The UN has issued several statements decrying these decisions, saying that Taliban leaders are institutionalizing large-scale and systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls and limiting their education, was "profoundly damaging to a generation of girls and the future of Afghanistan."
Speaking to Insider to mark a year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, women's rights activist Yalda Royan described her country as becoming a "kind of cage for Afghan women; the birds who cannot fly out of it just stuck inside the home without rights to movement, rights to education, rights to work — any basic right."