A woman has been sentenced to death by stoning – and we should all be outraged

A Sudanese court recently sentenced a 20-year-old, Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab, to execution by stoning. Her alleged crime? Adultery. 

This sentence, which she is appealing, is deeply alarming – and not only because no one should ever be stoned to death. It’s yet another sign of the regression of rights women and girls face in a range of countries.

The sentence was the first of this type in Sudan for almost a decade, though there have been other abusive death sentences imposed on women. It also happened against a backdrop of protests, in which women have played a key role, against an abusive military-imposed state of emergency following the country’s October 2021 military coup. 

Stoning remains on the books as a punishment in several countries, including Brunei and Iran. In theory, it is still an available punishment under Saudi Arabia’s uncodified criminal law, and it’s a form of extrajudicial punishment in others, including Afghanistan, typically for adultery. 

These laws disproportionately affect women; pregnancy can be considered evidence, and women who report rape are sometimes prosecuted rather than being treated as victims.

This sentence comes at a time when millions of women and girls face serious attacks on their rights. Two stories in particular have seized headlines this year – the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States. 

Crumbling freedoms

The Taliban, who executed women by stoning in the past, have spent the last year rolling back most rights of women and girls, restricting access to education, employment, health care, freedom of movement, speech, and expression, and responses to gender-based violence. 

And just last month, women in the US experienced a blow to their rights just when, by a six to three vote, the Supreme Court overturned a decision that had guaranteed a right to access abortion and limited the ability of states to restrict that right for 50 years. Many US states moved quickly to criminalise abortion. Some had so-called “trigger laws” that imposed an abortion ban automatically following the decision.

All these events highlight how precarious women’s rights are, and the speed with which they can crumble. They’re not isolated incidents. 

In Poland a Constitutional Tribunal ruling in October 2020 effectively banned access to legal abortion. 

Polygamy legislation pending in Cote d’Ivoire would permit multiple spouses – but only for men. 

In Indonesia, women, including non-Muslims, are increasingly being compelled to wear the hijab, and a university banned a student magazine for daring to discuss sexual violence on campus.

And in China, after decades of brutal enforcement of a policy banning most women in the country from having more than one child, the government is now pressuring women to have more children, and women have faced growing workplace discrimination as a result. 

Progress, in reverse

The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened an already concerning situation. In early 2019, a group of women leaders warned of “movements gaining traction that seek to halt the gains made and erode the rights won by women”. Some 18 months later, the UN predicted that the pandemic would push an added 47 million women and girls into poverty, as the caregiving burden rose, paid work became harder to access and millions of schools shut their doors. 

Being stuck at home during the pandemic, cut off from support networks and with service providers struggling to continue their work, was also a perfect storm for many women at risk of violence in the home. 

Attitudes have also changed: a UN Women study found the proportion of people who believe it’s sometimes acceptable to hit their spouse or partner rose by two percentage points across eight countries studied between 2018 and 2022, to 19 per cent. 

Meanwhile a 2022 study examining progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality by 2030 found that one-third of countries are making no progress or are reversing. At the current pace, we will not meet this goal. 

It’s not all bad news, of course. In 2021, women leaders took the role of head of state or government for the first time in eight countries. Colombia, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, South Africa, South Korea and the UK are only some of the countries that have in the past decades recognised the right of women to terminate their pregnancies. And a growing number of countries, from Chile to Germany and Mexico to Spain, have pledged to have a feminist foreign policy. 

But there remain echoes of deep unease, and how the world responds to each rollback of women’s rights anywhere has ripple effects for the rest of the world. 

When a country resumes stoning women, bans girls from school, or removes women’s control over their own bodies, it’s not just other women watching – it’s also other misogynists. When the world shrugs and moves on after women’s rights anywhere are attacked, abusive leaders elsewhere feel emboldened, and the global struggle for equality gets harder.

Wherever you are, what happens next to Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab affects all of us.

• Heather Barr is associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.

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