Afghanistan

Climate change and the economic downturn continue to fuel the crisis in Afghanistan, and there have been no “encouraging developments” towards getting girls back into classrooms, a senior UN official said on Tuesday. 

[…] During the reporting period, international attention on Afghanistan was focused predominately on the elevated humanitarian needs in the country and the further and drastic restrictions imposed on the lives of Afghan women and girls.

The Taliban have barred women from universities and many workplaces, compelling several aid organisations to pause operations in Afghanistan and donors to contemplate cuts to assistance. Yet the principled response remains to mitigate the harm these harsh rulings are doing to the most vulnerable Afghans.

China and Iran have urged mutual neighbour Afghanistan to end restrictions on women’s work and education. The call came in a joint statement Thursday issued at the close of a visit to Beijing by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, during which the two sides affirmed close economic and political ties and their rejection of Western standards of human rights and democracy.

Senior leaders of Afghanistan’s ruling Islamist Taliban have recently resorted to rare public criticism of each other, reigniting internal rift speculations over whether girls should be allowed to receive an education.

A UN-led group of humanitarians are hoping that the Taliban will allow Afghan women to again work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground following last month’s ban, four senior aid officials told journalists in New York on Monday. 

The ongoing collapse of the rule of law and judicial independence in Afghanistan is “a human rights catastrophe”, UN-appointed independent human rights experts warned on Friday.

The UN deputy chief and head of UN Women have conveyed a direct message to Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership calling on them to put the good of the country first and end recent policies towards women and girls that have confined them in their own homes, and violated their basic human rights.

Top United Nations officials visiting Afghanistan have held talks with the Taliban-led administration to discuss women’s education and work, weeks after authorities banned most women from working at NGOs and female students from attending universities.

Republican legislators have launched an investigation into the chaotic United States military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which allowed an immediate takeover by the Taliban and led to scenes of thousands of desperate people storming Kabul airport, some clinging to departing US planes as they rolled down the runway.