This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Afghanistan: rights experts urge Taliban to end ‘harmful annihilation’ of women’s freedoms

In Afghanistan, the “harmful annihilation” of women’s rights must be reversed, UN-appointed independent rights experts said on Wednesday.

In an appeal coinciding with International Women’s Day, the experts urged the de facto authorities in Afghanistan to lift the many restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

These include a ban on women working with non-governmental organizations, and a widely denounced secondary school and university attendance ban.

“Women and girls have been banned from entering amusement parks, public baths, gyms and sports clubs for four months,” the experts said, adding that since the Taliban takeover, “women have been wholly excluded from public office and the judiciary” too.

Today in Afghanistan, women and girls must also adhere to a strict dress code and they are not permitted to travel more than 75 kilometres without a male escort, the experts explained.

The situation has effectively erased 20 years of progress on women’s rights in the country, they warned.

New UK asylum bill would be in ‘clear breach’ of international law: UNHCR

Draft migrant legislation proposed by the United Kingdom Government would result in a de facto “asylum ban”, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has said.

If adopted, the new bill would deny the right to seek refugee protection to people arriving irregularly in the UK, such as those risking their lives to cross the English Channel in small boats.

Instead, these asylum-seekers would face detention and deportation, without having their individual circumstances examined.

“This would be a clear breach of the Refugee Convention and would undermine a longstanding, humanitarian tradition of which the British people are rightly proud,” UNHCR said on Tuesday.

The UK is one of the original signatories of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which recognizes that refugees may have to enter a country of asylum irregularly.

According to UK Government figures, some 45,000 people crossed the Channel on small boats in 2022, up 60 per cent from the previous year.

In a statement, UNHCR said that it would continue to support the UK in strengthening its asylum system; the UN agency also urged the Government to reconsider the bill and “pursue more humane and practical policy solutions”.

Cholera vaccination campaign begins in quake-hit northwest Syria

A massive UN-partnered cholera vaccination campaign has begun in earthquake-hit areas of northwest Syria “to avoid further illness and death”, the World Health Organization (WHO), announced on Wednesday.

Led by the UN health agency, WHO, and the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, the plan is to distribute 1.7 million doses of cholera vaccine to protect Syrians more than a year old.

There’s particular concern for the approximately 90,000 Syrians who were displaced by last month’s earthquake, which claimed over 4,500 lives and injured nearly 9,000.

The populations at highest risk of contracting cholera are in areas of Idlib.

According to the WHO, more than 2.1 million Syrians in the northwest of the country face an increased risk of sickness from waterborne diseases like cholera, especially those sheltering in overcrowded camps since the 6 February earthquake disaster.

Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer, UN News.