Filtration of unmoral internet pages in Afghanistan

Over the past 8 years the Telecommunications sector has developed tremendously, today 11 million Afghans have mobile phone and 2 million has access to internet, where the coverage of these services encompasses 80% of the geography of the country.

As internet is an international network of information and Afghan can access all sort of information comprising scientific, political, religious, cultural and behavioral at ease. Afghanistan is an Islamic country and posses very reach culture, so it becomes deem necessary to make available a clean internet content to Afghans based on Islamic and cultural values. 


Through this press conference both the Ministry of Communications and IT and Ministry of Information and Culture declared that they will make available clean internet contents to its countrymen. Ministry of Information and Culture will be responsible for the selection of filtered content regarding pornography, dating and gambling and the Ministry of Communications and IT in collaboration with the Licensed Internet Service Providers will put together necessary hardware to make this filter possible.


 Over the next two months the ISPs will install all necessary equipment in their networks which will enable them to filter internet from the pornographic content through dial up and point to point services.  Consultation is underway with ISPs to select solutions for the VSAT based customers, in meanwhile all customers who have procured internet services via VSAT has to install necessary filtering software in their local area networks in consultation with their internet service provider.


After 2 months from today internet users can report cases to ATRA (Afghanistan Telecommunication Regulatory Authority) on 999 where they find out that their Internet Service Provider has not installed the necessary filters on the networks through which they are provided with the internet service.