Afghanistan: Rights Group Flags Worsening Repression 2 Years into Taliban Rule – News18

The Taliban have intensified their restrictions on the rights of Afghan women, girls, and media since assuming control of the landlocked nation in August 2021, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in its latest report. In the last two years, the radical Islamic group has denied women and girls their basic rights to education, work, movement, and assembly, according to the New York-based rights group.

In a report released on Thursday, the HRW said that the Taliban have imposed extensive censorship on the media and access to information, and increased detentions of journalists and other critics. Afghanistan has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 28 million people – two-thirds of the population – in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

The United Nations has reported that four million people are acutely malnourished, including 3.2 million children under 5. “People in Afghanistan are living a humanitarian and human rights nightmare under Taliban rule,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Taliban leadership needs to urgently reject their abusive rules and policies, and the international community needs to hold them accountable for the current crises.”

According to HRW, the main causes of food insecurity since the Taliban takeover have been the harsh restrictions on women and girls’ rights. The result has been the loss of many jobs, particularly the dismissal of many women from their jobs and bans on women working for humanitarian organizations, except in limited areas. Women and girls are denied access to secondary and higher education, the rights group said.

Last December, the de-facto leaders of Afghanistan announced a ban on women working with all local and international nongovernmental organizations, including the UN, with exemptions for health, nutrition, and education.

“The Taliban’s misogynist policies show a complete disregard for women’s basic rights,” Abbasi said. “Their policies and restrictions not only harm Afghan women who are activists and rights defenders but ordinary women seeking to live a normal life.”

According to Human Rights Watch, international donor countries need to find ways to mitigate the ongoing humanitarian crisis without reinforcing the Taliban’s repressive policies against women.

“The Taliban’s response to Afghanistan’s overwhelming humanitarian crisis has been to further crush women’s rights and any dissent,” Abbasi said. “Governments engaging with the Taliban should press them to urgently reverse course and restore all Afghans’ fundamental rights while providing vital assistance to the Afghan population.”