Meryl Streep on the Inclusion of Women in the Future of Afghanistan | United Nations

of peace, but this is first my distinct pleasure to pass the floor to Mary Street to introduce it. Mary Street. Oh, well. Hello. Can you hear me? I hope you can hear me. Thank you, Foreign Minister of Indonesia, Excellencies, esteemed leaders and friends from all around the world, and I want to give heartfelt greetings, especially to our sisters in Afghanistan and all of those who have had to leave their country. We are all gathered here today to express our solidarity with you and to encourage the world community, especially those who continue to do business with Afghanistan, to intervene on your behalf. In 1971, I graduated from college here in New York, and that year, women in Switzerland were granted the right to vote. Women in Afghanistan, of course, had enjoyed that right already for half a century. Women in Afghanistan received the vote in 1919, 30 years before the women in France. No, 20. My math is bad. Well before women in the United States received the right to vote. The way that this culture, this society has been upended is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. In the 70s, most of the civil servants were women. Over half the teachers, doctors, there were women jurists, lawyers, in every profession. And then the world upended. And 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. This is odd. I feel that the Taliban, since they've issued over 100 edicts in Afghanistan, stripping women and girls of their education and employment, their freedom of expression and movement, they have effectively incarcerated half their population. And the international community, I believe, because the Taliban call themselves, I believe, Sunni, yes? The Sunni community has a special responsibility to, in some way, intervene on behalf of their women and girls. I feel that the international community as a whole, if they came together, could effect change in Afghanistan and stop the slow suffocation of an entire – half the population who are incarcerated. We are about to watch a very short version of a documentary film called The Sharp Edge of Peace. It's directed by Roya Sadat, and it's produced by Leslie Thomas, and it gives us a glimpse of the incredible courage and the tireless commitment of four Afghan women leaders, the only women who sat face-to-face with the Taliban during peace talks in 2020. It's one of my – the greatest honors of my life to have the privilege to be here with these extraordinary women. They encourage us and they remind us that a distorted, fundamentalist fear of the future can upend a civilization from the inside. And now, I hope you enjoy A Sharp Edge of Peace.