Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 20th June. UN rights experts on Monday warned of systematic “gender apartheid” and “gender persecution” by Taliban regime and stated that the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan featured prominently at the Human Rights Council.
Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also expressed concerns at the opening of the Council’s summer session, added that the de facto authorities had “dismantled the most fundamental principles of human rights, particularly for women and girls”.
Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, the experts, Richard Bennett and Dorothy Estrada-Tanck, in a joint statement to the HRC said that their plight was among the worst in the world.
The report called on the de facto authorities to respect and restore women’s and girls’ human rights.
It urged the international community and the UN to pay greater attention to widespread discrimination against women and girls in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bennett said “We also draw to the Council’s attention our deep concern that these serious deprivations of women’s and girls’ fundamental human rights and the harsh enforcement by the de facto authorities of their restrictive measures may constitute the crime against humanity of gender persecution.”
“Grave, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid.”
UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif stressed that despite repeated assertions to the contrary by the de-facto authorities, “over the past 22 months, every aspect of women’s and girls’ lives has been restricted. They are discriminated against in every way.”
Mr. Bennett visited Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan to fulfill his mandate and confirmed that he was unable to report improvements in the human rights situation “certainly not for women and girls whose predicament has only worsened, nor for others in the population who are marginalized, associated with the former Islamic Republic, or who resist or even disagree with the Taliban’s ideology”.
Shaharzad Akbar, Executive Director of Afghan NGO Rawadari told the Council that the women and girls of Afghanistan talk about “being buried alive, breathing but not being able to do much else without facing restrictions and punishments, their lives held still while the lives of the men around them, their male children, their brothers, their husbands, move forward.”
Ms. Akbar highlighted the gulf between Taliban rule and other neighboring Muslim countries where women are allowed to seek education, pursue their dreams, travel to space, and participate in politics.
He added that but not in Afghanistan, where the “Taliban have turned Afghanistan to a mass graveyard of Afghan women and girls’ ambitions, dreams and potential”.
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