Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and honourable members of Parliament, for inviting me to appear before this subcommittee.
I'll start my remarks today by addressing Afghanistan, a situation that is devastatingly grim, especially for women and girls. Severe food insecurity, an economic crisis and human rights abuses targeting women and girls have brought the country to the brink of humanitarian collapse, eroding decades of development and gender equality.
Over the past 15 months, the Taliban have effectively removed women from public life. They imposed a de facto ban on girls' secondary education and banned women from most forms of employment. A May order requires women to cover their faces whenever they're in public and leave home only when necessary, and imposes punishment for non-compliance on male family members, essentially compelling men to become the enforcers of Taliban rule on their own female relatives.
The Taliban dismantled the system to respond to gender-based violence, created new barriers for women accessing health care, blocked women aide workers from doing their jobs and attacked women's rights protesters with impunity.
Thus far, the international response to this crisis has been deeply inadequate. While many countries have issued statements, expressed deep concern and called on the Taliban to end the rights violations, concrete coordinated practical actions have been few and far between. We expect countries, especially those that have a feminist foreign policy like Canada, to be much more active in opposing Taliban violations. We ask these governments to coordinate closely with each other, use all mechanisms and measures at their disposal, including sanctions against Taliban leaders, and make the rights of Afghan women and girls a major priority in their foreign policy.
Turning to Saudi Arabia, it's clear that the kingdom is not progressing on human rights, despite promised reforms. The space for dissent has significantly shrunk, and new legislation has codified the abusive male guardianship of women, which essentially renders them permanent legal minors. In many ways, Saudi Arabia has become even more repressive.
A case in point, in August, a Saudi appeals court dramatically increased the prison sentence of Salma al-Shehab, a doctoral student, from six to 34 years, based solely on her Twitter activity. The sentence is believed to be the longest ever imposed on a Saudi woman for her peaceful online expression.
Another example of these hollow reforms is when Saudi authorities released three prominent women's rights activists from prison last year. They were previously arrested for publicly supporting the very reforms Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he's seeking to promote. While they're no longer behind bars, they remain banned from travel and are serving suspended sentences, allowing the authorities to return them to prison for any perceived criminal activity.
Saudi authorities clearly feel empowered to continue to crush dissent, and Saudi women are among their primary targets. Canada should ensure that it promptly and publicly condemns these actions, rulings and decisions, which further shrink the public space and target Saudi women.
And finally, there's Iran. Protests that started following the death in September of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman in the custody of the abusive morality police—