World News | The lives of Afghan women and girls have changed dramatically since the return of the Taliban last summer

Kabul [Afghanistan]August 16 (ANI): A year after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the country’s top UN official, resident coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov, describes his fears for the girl’s life and Call on women to play their full role in revitalizing Afghanistan’s economy.

Rights groups say the Taliban have repeatedly violated commitments to respect human rights and women’s rights since taking over Afghanistan a year ago. After the capture of Kabul last August, Taliban authorities imposed severe restrictions on the rights of women and girls.

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“I visited an orphanage in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz shortly before the Taliban took over in 2021. I was heartbroken when I spoke to a young girl there who lost her entire family the day before after the Taliban There is heavy fighting between the Afghan National Security Forces and the Taliban,” said Ramiz Arakbarov, Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Since then, Arakbarov said, the challenges have grown exponentially, and the struggle to build a stable future like the ones I met in Kunduz last year have become more demanding.

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“From hunger to chronic poverty, the scale of suffering in many parts of Afghanistan has continued to rise since the Taliban took Kabul last summer,” he said.

More than half of the country’s population now lives below the poverty line. Nearly 23 million people are food insecure, many of them seriously, and more than 2 million children are malnourished. In June 2022, a magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck central Afghanistan, killing more than 1,000 people and pushing already vulnerable communities to the brink.

“I am particularly concerned for Afghan women and girls, whose lives have changed dramatically since the Taliban returned to power last summer. Since 15 August 2021, we have seen a significant regression in their economic, political and social rights, And there is a worrying escalation in restrictive gender policies and practices,” he said.

Without the right to education, work and freedom of movement, women now find themselves increasingly marginalized, he added.

Keeping girls out of secondary school costs Afghanistan 2.5 percent of its annual gross domestic product, according to a new analysis by UNICEF. If the current 3 million girls were able to complete secondary education and participate in the job market, girls and women would contribute at least $5.4 billion to Afghanistan’s economy, the UN agency said.

UNICEF estimates do not take into account the non-financial impacts of denying girls access to education, such as the impending shortage of female teachers, doctors and nurses, the consequent impact on the decline in girls’ school enrolment and the medical costs associated with teenage pregnancy Increase.

The estimates also do not take into account the broader benefits of education, including overall educational attainment, reductions in child marriage and reductions in infant mortality. (ANI)

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