08/15/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/15/2024 12:57
Three years after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, we, the undersigned organizations, remain alarmed that the international response to worsening Taliban human rights violations, especially against women and girls, is increasingly ineffective and sometimes even harmful.
The Taliban have imposed draconian policies and taken abusive actions that clearly violate Afghanistan's obligations under international law, including international human rights law. These policies have had a particularly devastating impact on women and girls, LGBTQI+ people, human rights defenders, and religious and ethnic minorities.
Women and girls, half the population in Afghanistan, face not only poverty but also widespread and systematic violence and violations of their basic rights including to freedom of movement, freedom of speech and association, participation in public life, and access to education, paid employment, and pensions for war widows. The Taliban have suspended laws and dismantled institutions meant to protect people facing gender-based violence. The Taliban's ban on girls studying beyond grade six has been in place for well over 1000 days and women's university education has been barred for over 500 days, making Afghanistan the only country in the world with such bans.
Despite international condemnation, the Taliban continue to issue new abusive orders-notably including their March 2024 announcement that women may be stoned to death in punishment for perceived crimes. At the same time, they are also intensifying their enforcement of existing abusive orders/edicts, leaving Afghans in an environment where the rules on what they can and cannot do are constantly shifting toward increasing severity.
Afghans who speak out against the Taliban's abuses including human rights defenders, especially women defenders, protestors, and journalists, face arbitrary arrest, physical and sexual violence, arbitrary and indefinite detention, and torture and other ill-treatment, and their families also risk repercussions. Men who fail to enforce the Taliban edicts on their female
relatives face punishment. LGBTQI+ people fear for their lives, as the Taliban condone, encourage, and engage in violence against them. Ethnic and religious minorities, especially the Hazara community, face deep discrimination by the Taliban and endure targeted attacks with no hope of protection or assistance from the Taliban.
Many people who are experiencing persecution remain trapped and at great risk inside the country. Others have attempted to flee, but there are very few safe and legal pathways available to them to reach safety and resettle. Many make it to temporary safety no further than Pakistan or Iran, where Afghan refugees also face escalating abuses, including a high and growing risk of deportation back to Afghanistan with no opportunity to seek asylum as Pakistan is not registering new arrivals.
The situation is further complicated by an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Donor contributions are falling fast. Aid agencies are facing intense levels of Taliban interference in their work. Women and women-headed households are disproportionately affected by the crisis in large part because of Taliban bans and restrictions on women's employment in different sectors, including as aid workers.
The United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Mr. Richard Bennett, in June 2024 said the Taliban's institutionalized system of discrimination against women and girls "constituted in and of itself a widespread and systematic attack on the entire civilian population of Afghanistan". He called for the world to respond through tough accountability measures including holding accountable perpetrators of crimes against humanity of gender persecution, and by codifying gender apartheid as a crime under international law.
We were therefore shocked by the decision of the UN to organize the Doha 3 meeting (a June 30-July 1 2024 convening of special envoys on Afghanistan from around the world for discussions with the Taliban) mere weeks later during which Afghan women and civil society were excluded from the meeting and the meeting agenda included no items on human rights or women's rights. We believe this decision by the UN handed the Taliban an enormous victory for no meaningful benefit. It betrayed Afghan women who are risking their lives to fight for their rights and could set a precedent that is deeply harmful to both the struggle for human rights in Afghanistan and to the global women, peace and security agenda.
We call on all countries to unify in more urgently and effectively addressing the ongoing human rights catastrophe in Afghanistan, through steps that could include the following:
The dire and worsening human rights crisis in Afghanistan is not just a problem for its population. As international human rights organizations, we see clearly in our work how the lack of a meaningful international response to Taliban abuses is undermining human rights globally. We urge you to act.
Sincerely,