The rebound follows a massive 95 per cent decrease in 2023, when the ban nearly eliminated poppy production nationwide, leading to a severe decline in Afghanistan’s opium output. However, while cultivation has increased, the current levels remain substantially lower than in 2022, which saw 232,000 hectares under poppy cultivation. UNODC...
The report published on Tuesday and based on site inspections and witness interviews says that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the missile was launched by Russian armed forces”. It details the devastating impact of what has been one of the deadliest single incidents for Ukrainian civilians since Russia’s...
A new publication from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) presents “credible” reports that between 15 August 2021 and 30 June 2023, the country’s de facto authorities were responsible for 218 extrajudicial killings, 14 enforced disappearances, over 144 instances of torture and ill treatment, and 424 arbitrary arrests and detentions. ...
Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, made the appeal in a statement marking two years since the Taliban regained control of the country. ‘Gender apartheid’ “Through over 50 edicts, orders and restrictions, the Taliban have left no aspect of women’s lives untouched, no freedom spared. They have created a...
The gap between promises and practices by Afghanistan’s de facto authorities has widened during this period, they said, denouncing the idea of a “reformed” Taliban. They said Taliban policies imposed on the population “have resulted in a continuous, systematic and shocking rescinding of a multitude of human rights, including the...
UN Special Representative Roza Otunbayeva was briefing the Security Council on the dire situation facing the country and the international aid effort, with UN women workers among those now prevented by Taliban edicts from working. “We will not put our national staff in danger and therefore we are asking them not...
The urgent call from the ten Special Rapporteurs and members of the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, came in response to an announcement by the Taliban-appointed Supreme Court in favour of punishments including stoning, flogging and burying people under a wall. Women most vulnerable The de facto...
“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...
In statements on Wednesday, Secretary-General António Guterres was joined by deputy chief Amina Mohammed, in describing the latest escalation of the de facto authorities’ suppression of women, as a violation of their inalienable fundamental human rights. “It also violates Afghanistan’s obligations under international human rights law, and infringes on the principle of non-discrimination,...
“Our colleagues on the ground at the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) received word of an order by the de facto authorities that bans female national staff members of the UN from working,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, told reporters at UN Headquarters during the regular daily briefing....
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...
Addressing a private meeting of the Council, Roza Otunbayeva reiterated to ambassadors that Taliban decisions including the ban on girls attending high school, preventing women from going to university, and barring them from doing humanitarian work, are all “grave violations of fundamental rights”, according to UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. He told...