Earthquakes Further Compound Grave Challenges for Afghan Women

The effects of a series of earthquakes measuring a 6.3 magnitude that hit Afghanistan in early October have been devastating. More than 3,300 homes in the Herat province were flattened in the quakes, data from the World Health Organization showed, with reports of extensive damage to infrastructure, including the region’s water network.

The majority of the earthquake’s victims were women and children; they made up more than 90% of the nearly 1,500 deaths, according to the United Nations (UN). A report by the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) Working Group in Afghanistan said that more than half of those affected by the earthquakes were women.

That morning, one woman named Hanifa, who was eight months pregnant, fell and hit her belly as the ground shook violently beneath her. She bled severely and struggled to find help, but managed to give birth to a baby girl after four hours in the middle of rain and bitter cold. Yet the situation was nowhere near ideal for a newborn, and without blankets to cover her first child, her baby started to weaken.

“A bluish color started appearing around her mouth. Eventually, my newborn’s breath was taken away by the extreme cold, and I, who had just held my beloved in my arms, lost her forever,” Hanifa said, as quoted in a story published by UN Women.

Hanifa’s tragic story is one of many in Herat.

“In Afghanistan, where women’s rights, including their freedom to move, has been so significantly curtailed, this has created a perfect storm with devastating impacts,” said Alison Davidian, UN Women’s representative in Afghanistan. “The majority of persons killed, injured, or missing as a result of the Herat earthquakes were women — trapped inside their homes as a result of increasing restrictions.”

Afghan women have faced increasing restrictions under the Taliban government, which returned to power in August 2021 with initial promises of a more moderate rule than their previous stint in power in the 1990s. Instead, the Taliban have since stopped girls and women from getting an education beyond the sixth grade, banned women from public spaces, and ordered them to cover up when outside the house.

“The earthquakes, when combined with the ongoing humanitarian and women’s rights crisis, have made the situation not only difficult for women and girls, but deadly,” Davidian told the Associated Press.

Many women are also unable to access humanitarian aid due to cultural norms that mandate that their male relatives get support on their behalf. Women are also barred from working for the nongovernmental organizations, and women UN workers are not allowed to operate in the country. The absence of women aid workers now has a very explicit impact on the ground, as male aid workers can’t give women victims access to resources and support they desperately need, NPR reported.

"One of the challenges we faced in the first few days was burying the bodies of women who had died, since there were no women to help wash the bodies and fulfill religious requirements," Rahimi, an aid worker from Herat, told NPR.

The deteriorating human rights situation in Afghanistan, which is also affecting other marginalized communities in the country, pointed to a “grave picture” of the country, Richard Bennett, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, said this week. The Taliban’s repression of girls and women may amount to “gender persecution,” he said, adding that “systematic discrimination, oppression, and segregation of women and girls require further examination of the evolving phenomenon of ‘gender apartheid.’”