Afghanistan

A new report from the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released on Wednesday, confirms the erosion of basic human rights across the country since the Taliban takeover in August last year, pointing out they bear responsibility for extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and violations of fundamental freedoms.

[… ] it [the brief] draws on roundtable consultations with senior Afghan and EU policy practitioners to identify five key insights from the EU’s engagement in Afghanistan over the past twenty years.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet this week accused Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban of stripping women and girls of their fundamental rights and freedoms and rendering them invisible in public life. Her report was submitted Wednesday to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Afghanistan’s Taliban have alleged the United States is blocking their way to securing international recognition for the Islamist group’s new government in Kabul.

The head of a U.S. government watchdog says he is concerned that money sent by the United Nations to Afghanistan for humanitarian and economic aid will end up in the hands of the Taliban government.

While many Afghans have desperately sought ways to flee the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, a handful of former Afghan government officials returned to Kabul this week to be welcomed by the Taliban.

[…] Just a few hours’ drive north of Kabul, the province has long been an anti-Taliban stronghold and remains the only significant pocket of resistance to the group since the fall of Kabul last August.

Germany urged the global community Tuesday to collectively tell Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban rulers that they "are heading in the wrong direction” and called for strictly linking any economic aid for the war-torn country to the human rights of Afghans.

The Afghan Taliban have turned down renewed calls by the United Nations for the Islamist rulers to reverse restrictions on the human rights of women in Afghanistan, saying they are in line with local religious and cultural values.

Afghanistan is at a crossroads and the de facto authorities, the Taliban, must pursue a path towards stability and freedom for all citizens, especially women, the UN independent expert on human rights there said in the capital, Kabul, on Thursday. Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett was speaking to journalists at the end of an 11-day visit to the country.