There are many dangers lurking in the shadows just off the bustling streets of the Afghan capital Kabul, but none is more threatening than the drug abuse crisis that is ravaging the city, and the entire country.
The multiple restrictions placed on women and girls by Afghanistan’s de facto rulers are costing the Taliban “both domestic and international legitimacy” and are highly unpopular across the country, said the top UN official based there on Wednesday.
The plight of women and girls in Afghanistan featured prominently at the Human Rights Council on Monday where independent UN-appointed rights experts warned of systematic “gender apartheid” and “gender persecution”.
Roughly 90 per cent of the population in Afghanistan is on the brink of poverty “and children bear the brunt of it,” the Representative of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in the country, Fran Equiza, told journalists in New York on Thursday.
“Brutal and undignified” forms of punishment in Afghanistan and the use of capital punishment coupled with a lack of fair trial guarantees, violate international law and must stop immediately, a group of UN-appointed independent human rights experts said on Thursday.
A “large-scale” outbreak of the Moroccan Locust, one of the world’s most damaging plant pests, across eight provinces in Afghanistan’s wheat basket, could cause massive crop losses and “dramatically” worsen food insecurity.
The use of corporal punishment by the de facto authorities in Afghanistan runs counter to international law and must stop, the UN Assistance Mission in the country (UNAMA), said on Monday.
Following a systematic crackdown on the rights of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban – from attending school to working at the UN – “the stage may be set for multiple preventable deaths that could amount to femicide” unless restrictions are reversed rapidly, independent UN human rights experts announced on Friday, following an eight-day visit to the country.
The UN chief has pledged that the Organization “will never be silent” when women and girls’ rights are under attack, as they are today in Afghanistan, and declared that the Taliban ban on Afghan women doing lifesaving humanitarian work is putting millions of lives in jeopardy there.
In a landmark resolution, the UN Security Council on Thursday condemned the de facto rulers of Afghanistan’s decision to ban women nationals from working for the United Nations, calling for Taliban leaders to “swiftly reverse” their decision.
