Taliban must immediately stop targeting Afghan women, say UN experts

By Peter Kenny

GENEVA (AA) – UN experts demanded on Thursday the immediate reversal of the Taliban’s recent order banning Afghan women from working with the United Nations in Afghanistan.

They said that on April 4 the de facto authorities prevented women working for the United Nations in Jalalabad from attending their places of work.

On Wednesday, the Taliban issued a countrywide ban on Afghan women working with the United Nations, said the experts.

“In continuing to target, exclude and isolate women and girls in Afghan society and denying women from working in many professions in Afghanistan, the Taliban is putting at risk the lives of all Afghans and jeopardizing the country’s future,” warned the experts in a statement.

The action follows the ban on women working with NGOs, issued on Dec. 24, 2022, and the extensive list of earlier restrictions on women and girls imposed since the Taliban took power.

The experts said the latest ban is unlawful discrimination against women and a direct attack on them.

It is wholly against the core values and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the international human rights treaties to which Afghanistan is a party and humanitarian principles.​​​​​​​

The experts said such a ban by the Taliban on the female staff of non-governmental organizations has devastated the population and humanitarian operations.

The latest ban will further hamper the delivery of critical assistance to millions of Afghans needing urgent support, with many of the worst impacted being women and girls, they warned.

“The Taliban is once again demonstrating its brazen disregard for women’s rights and their well-being, and the extent they go to remove women from all areas of public life and strip them of their rights and dignity,” the experts said.

“The targeting of women and girls in Afghanistan and denying their fundamental rights because they are women increases concern about gender persecution, a crime against humanity, and those responsible must be held accountable.”

The experts encouraged the international community to stand in solidarity with Afghan women and girls and use every possible avenue to convince the Taliban to reverse this unacceptable treatment of women, which will have devastating consequences for all Afghan people.

“We call on the de facto authorities to immediately lift the bans on women working with national and international NGOs and the United Nations,” they said.

Last month, experts noted that the Taliban had denied women and girls their right to education during their initial rule between 1996 and 2001 and had done the same after seizing power for a second time in 2021.

The experts include Richard Bennett, special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan; Dorothy Estrada Tanc, chair of The Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls; Elizabeth Broderick, Ivana Radacic, Meskerem Geset Techane, and Melissa Upreti; Fionnuala Ni Aolain, special rapporteur on protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms countering terrorism, and other experts.