Afghanistan Archives - Page 3 of 4

UN calls on Taliban to end corporal punishment in Afghanistan

·May 9, 2023·1 min read

“Corporal punishment is a violation of the Convention against Torture and must cease,” said UNAMA’s human rights chief Fiona Frazer, stressing that the UN is “strongly opposed” to the death penalty. She called on the de facto authorities to establish an “immediate moratorium” on executions. Flogging and stoning In a...

Afghanistan: Women tell UN rights experts ‘we’re alive, but not living’

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·May 5, 2023·3 min read

“We are alarmed about widespread mental health issues and accounts of escalating suicides among women and girls,” they said in a joint statement. “This extreme situation of institutionalized gender-based discrimination in Afghanistan is unparalleled anywhere in the world.” ‘Extreme’ discrimination Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, de...

Afghanistan: Guterres says women worker ban ‘unacceptable and puts lives in jeopardy’

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·May 3, 2023·2 min read

Secretary-General António Guterres was speaking to reporters in Doha, Qatar, after convening an international meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan. He said they had agreed on the need for a “strategy of engagement” with the Taliban, to help the country’s most vulnerable people. No question of Taliban recognition Mr. Guterres made clear that...

Guterres convenes meeting in Doha to discuss key issues in Afghanistan

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·May 1, 2023·1 min read

The aim is to reinvigorate international engagement around key issues, such as human rights, in particular women’s and girls’ rights, inclusive governance, countering terrorism and drug trafficking. “The meeting is intended to achieve a common understanding within the international community on how to engage with the Taliban on these issues,”...

Afghanistan: UN predicts restrictions on women’s rights will worsen economic catastrophe

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·April 24, 2023·3 min read

The Afghanistan Socio-Economic Outlook 2023, released by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), provides an overview of the fallout resulting from the takeover of Afghanistan by its present-day de facto rulers, the Taliban, in August 2021. Immediately after the Taliban assumed power, the Afghan economy collapsed, accelerating Afghanistan’s decade-long slide into...

‘The world cannot abandon the people’: Top humanitarian official in Afghanistan

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·April 7, 2023·3 min read

Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, said that amid severe underfunding, the move would “further undermine humanitarian partners’ ability to support the population, especially the most vulnerable such as women and girls”. “The world cannot abandon the people of Afghanistan at this precarious moment,” Dr. Alakbarov insisted, before...

Afghanistan: OHCHR alarm over arrests of activists speaking up for women and girls

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·March 30, 2023·1 min read

Since the beginning of the year, several civil society activists and journalists have been detained for speaking out against Taliban policies that restrict women and girls’ access to education, work, and most other areas of public life. “No one should be detained for speaking out in defence of their fundamental...

Afghanistan still a grave humanitarian crisis, senior aid official says

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·March 1, 2023·2 min read

Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Deputy Special Representative and Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, updated journalists in New York on developments in a country where 28 million people now depend on aid to survive. Immense humanitarian needs “Afghanistan remains the world’s largest humanitarian crisis in 2023, notwithstanding, of course, the recent devastating earthquakes...

Afghanistan: Top UN delegation tells Taliban to end confinement, deprivation, abuse of women’s rights

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·January 21, 2023·4 min read

Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, the Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Bahous, and the Assistant Secretary-General for UN political, peacebuilding and peace operations, Khaled Khiari, spend four days on a fact-finding mission in Afghanistan, to engage with Taliban leaders, and “underscore UN solidarity with the Afghan people”, according to a press release...

Afghanistan: Collapse of legal system is ‘human rights catastrophe’

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·January 20, 2023·2 min read

“Lawyers, judges, prosecutors and other actors involved with the legal system in Afghanistan face grave risks to their safety, and those still practicing must navigate a deeply challenging, non-independent legal system”, Special Rapporteurs Margaret Satterthwaite, on the independence of judges and lawyers, and Richard Bennett, on the situation of human...

‘Unfathomable restrictions’ on women’s rights risk destabilizing Afghanistan

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·December 27, 2022·1 min read

“No country can develop – indeed survive – socially and economically with half its population excluded”, said the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “These unfathomable restrictions placed on women and girls will not only increase the suffering of all Afghans but, I fear, pose a risk beyond Afghanistan’s borders”. He...

UN Secretary-General ‘deeply disturbed’ by Taliban’s reported ban on women working for NGOs in Afghanistan

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·December 25, 2022·1 min read

A statement issued by Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said that Secretary-General António Guterres was “deeply disturbed by the reported order of the de facto Taliban authorities” and that the UN chief “reiterates the rights of all women to participate in the workforce thus contributing to the greater good.” According to media reports, the Taliban ordered all...