Afghanistan

The United Nations has renewed its call for Afghanistan's Taliban to immediately reopen schools to teenage girls, saying the de facto authorities have no justification for denying the right to education on any grounds, including religion or tradition.

The Security Council today adopted two resolutions concerning Afghanistan, both unanimously, one of which extended the mandate of the United Nations special political mission for one year, while the other requested an independent assessment of — and recommendations for — efforts to address that country’s challenges.

Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the “most repressive country in the world [for] women’s rights”, the senior UN official in Kabul told the Security Council on Wednesday, while nevertheless voicing a nuanced position on the importance of continuing to engage with the group.

A report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council Monday accuses Afghanistan’s de facto Taliban rulers of pursuing a policy “tantamount to gender apartheid."

A new government watchdog report details how poor planning in the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, after years of inadequate oversight, contributed to the rapid collapse of the Western-backed government as the Taliban closed in on Kabul.

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.