Streep: 'A Squirrel Has More Rights' Than Afghan Girls

Birds, squirrels, and cats have more freedom than Afghan women, the actor Meryl Streep said in a powerful speech at United Nations headquarters on Monday, calling attention to the stripping of women's rights under the Taliban. A bird can sing in public, a squirrel can frolic in a park, and "a cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face," said Streep. Afghan women and girls can do none of this under law established by the Taliban, Streep added. Through more than 100 edicts stripping women and girls of education, employment, and freedom of expression and movement, the Taliban has "effectively incarcerated half of their population," Streep said, per Reuters.

"A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan," Streep continued, per the BBC. "This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law" and "a cautionary tale for the rest of the world." Since the Taliban seized power in 2021, women and girls have been barred from schools and universities, most forms of employment, and many public spaces. Under a new religious code issued in August, women and girls are also forbidden from laughing or raising their voices in public and looking at men other than their husbands or relatives, the Washington Post reports. Any woman venturing into public must wear a head covering and conceal the lower half of their faces. Afghan women say the Taliban's morality police are now moving to enforce the rules in urban areas, where enforcement was previously lax.

"The entire country has turned into a graveyard for women's dreams," a woman in her late 40s tells the Post. Younger women talk of losing all hope in recent weeks that the Taliban might reverse its restrictions on women. The Taliban claims religious justifications for the rules, saying "we highly respect [women] in their role as mother, sister, wife" and would "never compare them to cats," per the BBC. But Afghan women argue the Koran imposes far fewer restrictions on women than the Taliban. The Post notes "there is widespread speculation that the regime is adding restrictions on women's rights so it can later bargain them away" as it seeks international recognition for its government. (More Afghanistan stories.)