Meryl Streep on women's condition in Afghanistan: 'Squirrel has more rights than a girl..'

Meryl Streep. Pic/AFP

Actor Meryl Streep highlighted the condition of women in Afghanistan during a discussion held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. She said that a "squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today", reported The Washington Post.

"Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park," Streep said at the event focused on women's rights in Afghanistan. "A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls," she added.

"The Taliban, which took over the country after the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, had previously introduced rules restricting women's rights, such as a ban on women and girls attending school above the sixth grade. However, the regime had not fully enforced them in urban areas and had portrayed the new regulations as temporary", as per The Washington Post.

Streep highlighted the severe restrictions, saying, "A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not, and a woman may not in public."

"The international community, as a whole, if it came together, could effect change in Afghanistan and stop the slow suffocation of ... half the population," Streep added.

Taliban have attempted to partially defend their new laws by claiming they are intended to safeguard women. The regime has recently begun tightening down on men, with morality police visiting mosques and inspecting for those who haven't grown beards.

Long before the Taliban came to power, Afghanistan granted women the right to vote in 1919, a year before the United States. It opened its first schools for girls in 1921, according to The Washington Post.

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