Meryl Streep and Female Afghan Leaders on Women's Rights in Afghanistan | Amanpour and Company

Well, up next, we turn to Afghanistan, where, in an unprecedented move, the Taliban are to be taken to the International Court of Justice. It will be the first time a country will be taken to court over gender discrimination. And it is thanks to the tireless efforts of the brave Afghan women standing up for their rights, like former lawmaker Fawzia Khufi and the nation's first female governor, Habiba Sarabi. They joined legendary actress Meryl Streep at the United Nations this week to promote a new documentary called The Sharp Edge of Peace, which follows the doomed efforts of peace talks with the Taliban back in 2020. Christiane sat down with all three of them to discuss how much has changed. Meryl, Fawzia and Habiba, welcome to the program. Thank you. I want to ask you first, Meryl, you introduced the film, you were at the United Nations with all the women, the Secretary General was there. You started by saying the following about your Afghan sisters. 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. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not and a woman may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. What about this touches you and makes you be involved? I have followed the plight of women in Afghanistan for about 20 years with my friend Jessica Newworth and the work of the Women's Forum. I have been very interested in women's rights around the world and in the United States and still am. But this most recent edict that people can't speak in public, that they have to completely hide themselves. It's like the erasure of an entire gender. I don't think it has precedence in history, even in the natural world. One part of the species erases the presence of another. I think it's particularly an eloquent moment to raise where we are in the world with Afghan rights. Fazio, you have been a member of parliament for a long time. You have been a public spokeswoman for Afghanistan and especially the women of Afghanistan. As Meryl says, she has been following the plight of Afghan women for 20 years. But for 20 years, you had freedoms that you never had before. Your film, The Sharp Edge of Peace, shows Afghan women singing, dancing, playing taekwondo, girls and women active members of society. There is a clip of an interview with you on the tarmac of the airport in which you, Fazio, expressed real hope that actually so much change had happened that they could not roll back the rights for women. We're just going to play that. Describe what it's like today. Well, I think the one thing Taliban failed to understand is that Afghanistan has transformed. And that transformation is not only limited to Kabul in terms of liberty, in terms of women's rights, in terms of people believing in the future of their daughters more. My father established the first school in our village, but he never allowed my elder sisters to go to school. People from the same village, over the last 20 years, came to me asking for a school for their girls to be established. So that's a transformed Afghanistan. And that's a transformed woman of Afghanistan. You see them, despite being completely erased from any kind of public and social life, they still protest. Living in Kabul in Afghanistan these days for any human beings is not easy, because the new edict also put rule on men's size of beard, on men's work and job that they can choose. But despite all of that, women still show resilience. That is a sign of different Afghanistan that the Taliban don't get that. And I think this is the same Afghanistan 1996, where they were suppressing people and they were silent. Today, every woman in Afghanistan is a journalist. Every woman in Afghanistan is a TV by talking about what their experience is. So as much as they suffer, they suppress them. It's like, you know, they're popping up in a different way, in a different method. Can I ask you, Habiba, because you were the first appointed governor right after the fall of the Taliban, after, you know, democracy in a certain way and certainly more liberty for women came after 2001. Some people think, you know, this was just a project in the urban centers, just Kabul, just Herat. But you were in Bamiyan. I mean, you were in full agricultural countryside. They took to your authority without protesting against it. You were accepted as an authority figure as a female governor. Definitely. And also not only accepted, but also welcomed. And so I remember that the time when I was appointed as a governor, when I went to Bamiyan and thousands of people were coming to welcome me. So this, it was a point of history in Bamiyan and the history of Afghanistan.