Arab News | UN rights council slams Taliban’s ‘oppression’ of women

GENEVA: The UN Human Rights Council on Monday unanimously urged the Taliban to repeal all practices restricting the fundamental freedoms of women and girls, saying Afghanistan’s institutionalised discrimination should shock humanity.

The United Nations’ 47-country rights body adopted the resolution without a vote.

The council said human rights in Afghanistan were deteriorating and voiced serious concern about the “grave, worsening, widespread and systematic oppression of all women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban”.

The council “deplores the Taliban’s institutionalisation of its system of discrimination, segregation, domination, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls, and the harms that it has entrenched, which are unbearable, unjustifiable and should shock the conscience of humanity,” it said.

The Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021 and imposed a strict version of Islamic law.

The Taliban government remains largely excluded from the international community, which criticises it its repressive measures.

Women have been particularly affected by Taliban government measures. They are banned from public places including parks and from most jobs, while education for girls beyond age 12 is outlawed.

– ‘Conformity, fear and exclusion’ –

The UN council said it was deeply concerned about the “continuing, systematic, systemic and all-encompassing erosion” of respect for women’s rights by the Taliban.

The council said many human rights had been “under concerted attack in Afghanistan in the past five years”, while the Taliban “have enforced a growing web of edicts and institutional controls that has reshaped nearly every aspect of public and private life, engineering a society founded on ideological conformity, fear and exclusion”.

The council urged the Taliban to repeal “all policies and practices that restrict the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls”, including the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, to education, to work and to vote.

The council urged the international community to “adjust further its engagement with any stakeholders in Afghanistan” with regard to human rights and fundamental freedoms for all Afghans.

It condemned all forms of discrimination against women and girls, and reiterated that sexual slavery of boys, and child marriages and forced marriages constituted human rights abuses.

The council deplored the suffering of Afghans and voiced deep concern about deeply entrenched impunity in the country.

The resolution was brought forward by 37 European countries, plus Canada and Chile. The council extended the mandate of its independent special rapporteur on rights in Afghanistan for another year.