WORLD NEWS | Afghanistan now most repressed country for women: UN

kabul [Afghanistan]March 9 (ANI): Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the country has become the most oppressive country in the world for women and girls, stripping them of many basic rights, the United Nations said on Wednesday (local time).

In a statement released on International Women’s Day, the UN mission in Afghanistan said the new Taliban leadership “demonstrated an almost complete focus on enforcing the rules that keep most women and girls effectively confined to their homes.”

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Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva, UN Special Representative and head of UNAMA, strongly condemned recent Taliban decrees that further erode the rights of Afghan women.

Taliban-ruled Afghanistan remains “the most repressive country (for) women’s rights in the world,” a senior U.N. official in Kabul told the Security Council on Wednesday, while taking a nuanced stance on the importance of continuing to engage with the group.

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“Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country on women’s rights in the world, and it is heartrending to witness their methodical, deliberate and systematic efforts to remove Afghan women and girls from the public sphere,” said Roza Otunbayeva.

Since coming to power in August 2021, the new leaders have banned girls and women from secondary and university education, banned women from working in national and international NGOs, and ordered that women be covered from head to toe.

Women are also largely restricted from traveling and excluded from public decision-making, the UN noted.

Confining women to their homes is “one of the world’s greatest humanitarian and economic crises, a colossal act of national self-harm,” Otunbayeva said.

“Confining half of the country’s population to their homes in one of the world’s largest humanitarian and economic crises is a colossal act of national self-harm,” Otunbayeva added.

“This will condemn not just women and girls, but all future generations of Afghans into poverty and aid dependence,” she said. “It will further isolate Afghanistan from its own citizens and from the rest of the world.”

According to the International Labor Organization, in the last quarter of 2022, the number of women employed in Afghanistan will be 25% lower than in the last quarter of 2021, mainly due to restrictions on where they can work and travel.

Taliban leaders have defended their restrictions on women’s education, saying the bans are temporary because women are not following a dress code or are studying subjects such as engineering and agriculture.

The restrictions, especially the ban on education and the work of NGOs, have drawn strong international condemnation. But the Taliban showed no signs of backing down, claiming the ban was temporarily suspended, allegedly because women were not wearing the Islamic hijab or hijab properly and were not adhering to gender segregation rules.

As for the ban on university education, the Taliban government says some of the subjects taught are not in line with Afghan and Islamic values.

The UN mission in Afghanistan also said that since the Taliban took over, it has documented a near-continuous stream of discriminatory laws and measures against women – whose rights to travel or work outside the confines of the home and access to spaces are largely are restricted and excluded from public decision-making at all levels.

The restrictions have had serious fallout, including more suicides, child marriages, early childbearing, poverty-related losses and a higher risk of domestic violence and sexual exploitation for women, the UN said.

11.6 million Afghan women and girls are in need of humanitarian assistance, the statement said. However, the Taliban has banned women from working for NGOs, further undermining international aid efforts. (Arnie)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)