U.N. says cannot recognize Taliban until ban on women’s rights is lifted
UNITED NATIONS (AA) – The UN envoy to Afghanistan called on the Taliban to lift the ban on women’s rights.
The envoy Roza Otunbayeva said the international community can not recognize the Taliban-led government as long as it does not respect women’s rights.
”I am blunt about the obstacles they have created for themselves by the decrees and restrictions they have enacted, in particular against women and girls,” she said.
The Taliban banned Afghan women from working with NGOs last April.
”We have conveyed to them that as long as these decrees are in place it is nearly impossible that their government will be recognized by members of the international community,” she added.
Otunbayeva said the Taliban had created obstacles for themselves by issuing the decrees and restrictions.
She said that the U.N. has not yet received any statement or assurance that these bans will be lifted.
”We have been given no explanations by the de facto authorities for this ban and no assurances that it will be lifted,” she said.
Otunbayeva said that female personnel in UN agencies will not be replaced by men, as some authorities suggested.
She said the de facto government is exclusively male and is ruled by the Taliban’s Pashtun and rural political base.
She also said that the UN Special Coordinator for Afghanistan, Feridun Sinirlioglu, is currently in Afghanistan.
”The Taliban regime remains insular and autocratic. The composition of the de facto government is entirely male, and almost totally derived from the Taliban’s Pashtun and rural political base,” she said.
The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021 was followed by the cutoff of international financial aid. It has plunged the strife-torn country into an economic, humanitarian, and human rights crisis.
The Taliban rulers have engaged in a sustained assault on human rights and women’s rights despite their pledges to protect them.
Women and girls have been stripped of their rights, including the right to education, and have disappeared from public life under the Taliban.
Thousands of women have since lost their jobs or been forced to resign from government institutions and the private sector.
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