Online violence against Afghan women surged this year due to curbs: Report

Amid excessive restrictions on Afghan women under the Taliban regime, online violence against Afghan women has surged this year due to severe restrictions, Khaama Press reported, citing recent research.

The London-based Afghan Witness Organisation published the results of their most recent study on the rise in online violence against campaigners for women's rights on Monday.

According to the organization's research, there has been an increase in online abuse against Afghan women activists, particularly those who use social media, which has also silenced some of the women from standing up to the abuse.

Social media has become a vital space for Afghan women to protest against the Taliban. For example, Afghans used the hashtag #LetHerLearn to protest the Taliban's ban on women attending university. However, online abuse of Afghan women has tripled since the Taliban takeover.

Citing the report, Khaama Press asserts that in the two years since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, there have been three times as many offensive posts targeted at women, which has resulted in the suppression of "women political activists in Afghanistan."

Examining 78,000 messages in Persian and Pashto on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, the report focused on approximately 100 active Afghan women and covered a specified time period during which the number of such instances has increased in comparison to previous years, according to Khaama Press.

The majority of these posts, according to research conducted by the Afghan Witness Organisation, showed that the online abuse of Afghan women was done by "Taliban supporters."

In response to the findings, one of the study's researchers, Francesca Gentile, said that "social media has transformed from a space for expressing social and political views into a hub for harassing, intimidating, and suppressing women since the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan."

The results of this study also show that Afghan women and girls are not only denied their basic rights but also face a poisonous virtual environment that silences them.

More than two years have passed since the Taliban banned girls from studying beyond sixth grade in Afghanistan, and there is no sign of reopening the schools to girls studying above sixth grade.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they have issued several decrees that impose restrictions on women. Afghanistan's women have faced numerous challenges since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Girls and women in the war-torn country have no access to education, employment and public spaces.