The Taliban's edicts concerning women result practically in their total exclusion from public life, by theoretically forbidding them, in towns, from working outside of their homes.
This has led to the unemployment of tens of thousands of female workers, of professionals, and of associates of international organisations.
Consequently, the lives of widows, of which there are more than 50,000 in the capital alone, have been made much more difficult.

Until 1996, before the arrival of the Taliban in Kabul, 60% of the state's administrators were women, who for the most part worked in secondary positions.
However, the strict measures currently in place affect men as much as women, as it is the husbands who are fined, beaten or imprisonned if the law is broken.
This illustrates how the Taliban regime insists upon the responsibilities of men in controlling the behaviour of women.
The concept of total separation of the sexes has been equally extended to hospital care, where there is a completely segregated medical system.
Society as a whole suffers the knock-on effect of a regime which, while providing security for people's lives and property, forcibly imposes a moral Utopia, without providing a solution to the general impoverishment caused by under-development and the devastation of war.

The Taliban order, firmly rooted in an extremely narrow interpretation of a religious law called the "chariat", claims that this is a broad-based, systematic project aimed at society as a whole.
The Taliban deny that the laws they impose are to the detriment of women and that they deprive them of their rights.
On the contrary, they are adamant that they are rebuilding those rights via a strict application of the "chariat", and are reconstructing the proper relationship between men and women.
Promoters of the "chariat" proclaim they are working for the honour, the rights and the dignity of women.

But what are these rights?
What are the fundamental aspects that underpin women's position in society according to Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan?
First and foremost, his doctrine requires a particular concept of the nature of women, which is then the foundation of the division of tasks and responsibilities.
According to Mullah Omar, "Almighty God created man and woman differently, so they may fulfill distinct roles on this Earth.
A proverb states that domestic work is the responsibility of women, while the outside world belongs to the warriors".

Speech given at the "Armed Men, Hardened Women" conference in Geneva, at the University Institute of Development Studies, 23-24 January 2001.