Afghanistan: Taliban ‘may be responsible for discrimination against women’, says rights expert
Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed similar concerns on the opening day of the Commission’s summer session, adding that the de facto authorities “have dissolved the most important basic principles of human rights , especially for women and girls”.
In a joint report presented to the Commission by the Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, experts, Richard Bennett and Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, said that their situation is among the worst in the world .
Their report calls on the authorities to respect and restore the rights of women and girls. He also urged international countries and the UN to pay greater attention to widespread discrimination against women and girls in Afghanistan.
Prejudice
“We also draw to the attention of the Committee our deep concern that these serious needs of the fundamental human rights of women and girls and the strict implementation by the authorities of their restrictive measures may constitute a violation against the humanity of the persecuted male,” Mr. Bennett.
“Grave, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and law, which also raises concerns that they may be responsible for discrimination against women. “
Expressing those concerns, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif emphasized that despite repeated claims to the contrary by the de-facto authorities, “since the last 22 months, every aspect of women’s and girls’ lives is restricteded. They are exclusive in every way. “
Mr. Bennett, who visited Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan to fulfill his Special Rapporteur mandate, asserted that he could not report improvements in the human rights situation “certainly not for women and girls who they the stress has only gotten worseor for others in the marginalized population, associated with the former Islamic Republic, or who oppose or even disagree with the ideology of the Taliban”.
Feeling ‘buried alive’
Giving insight into the mindset of women and girls in Afghanistan, Shaharzad Akbar, Executive Director of the Afghan NGO Rawadari, told the Committee that they talk about “being buried alive, breathing but not able to do much else without facing restrictions and suffering, their lives are stable while the lives of the men around them, their sons, their brothers, their husbands, are moving forward.”
Ms. Akbar also highlights the gulf between the Taliban regime and other neighboring Muslim countries where women are allowed to seek education, pursue their dreams, travel abroad, and participate in politics.
But not in Afghanistan, where them “The Taliban has turned Afghanistan against us The cemetery of Afghan women and girls, dreams and power“.
