Sharbat Gula, known to much of the world simply as the "Afghan girl," received the keys to the home late last month in a ceremony led by Afghan government officials. It comes after three decades as a refugee in Pakistan and a tumultous last year back in Afghanistan.
In 1984, McCurry was based in Pakistan, employed as a photojournalist for National Geographic during the early years of the Soviet war in neighbouring Afghanistan. On one shoot, McCurry stepped into an all-girls Islamic religious school. There he took the photo of an eight-year-old student named Sharbat Gula.
McCurry was a complete stranger, and it is not welcome for a girl of traditional Pashtun culture to reveal her face, share space, make eye contact and be photographed by a man who does not belong to her family.
The U.N.'s most powerful body must support governments seeking to legally declare the intensifying crackdown by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on women and girls "gender apartheid," the head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality said Tuesday.
Under international law, apartheid is defined as a system of legalized racial segregation that originated in South Africa. But a growing consensus among international experts, officials and activists says apartheid can also apply to gender in cases like that of Afghanistan, where women and girls face systematic discrimination.
The Taliban took power in August 2021 during the final weeks of the U.S. and NATO forces' pullout from Afghanistan after 20 years of war. As they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban gradually reimposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, barring girls from school beyond the sixth grade and women from almost all jobs, public spaces, gyms and recently closing beauty salons.
Roza Otunbayeva, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA, welcomed the recent visit of a group of Islamic scholars from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's member nations to Afghanistan to focus on girls' education, women's rights and the need for inclusive governance.
"He's the producer of decisions," Otunbayeva replied. She said she heard from a Cabinet member that more than 90% of its members support allowing girls to study, but as soon as such views get to the southern city of Kandahar, where Akhundzada is based, they are blocked.
dd2b598166