Ahead of the upcoming UN-convened meeting of Special Envoys on Afghanistan taking place in Doha, Qatar on 18 and 19 February, Deprose Muchena, Senior Director at Amnesty International said:
“The upcoming Doha meeting is a significant opportunity for a unified and concerted action to protect the rights of all Afghan people, particularly the rights of women and girls. The culture of impunity that enables the Taliban’s ongoing grave human rights violations needs to be addressed urgently.
The international community cannot continue to take a ‘business as usual’ approach vis-a-vis the human rights situation in Afghanistan.
Deprose Muchena, Senior Director at Amnesty International
“The Taliban as the de facto authorities in Afghanistan have shown a complete disregard of the country’s obligations under international law having severely restricted the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, and access to justice in the country. The Taliban’s discriminatory restrictions on the rights of women and girls, with the apparent aim of completely erasing them from public arenas, has also intensified in the recent months.
“The international community cannot continue to take a ‘business as usual’ approach vis-a-vis the human rights situation in Afghanistan. In Doha, the UN Secretary-General, senior UN officials, and all Special Envoys attending the meeting from the region and beyond should insist that the Taliban immediately reverse all restrictions curtailing the rights of women and girls and release all those arbitrarily arrested and unlawfully detained.”
Background
On 18-19 February 2024, the UN-convened meeting of Special Envoys and Special Representatives on Afghanistan is taking place in Doha, Qatar, to discuss the path forward on the independent assessment on Afghanistan mandated by Resolution 2679.
On 7 February 2024, Amnesty International joined 9 other organizations in a letter to the UN Secretary-General urging him to ensure Afghan civil society, including women human rights defenders, are full participants in the Doha meeting and that women’s rights are central to all discussions.
Harsh penalties for non-compliance with the strict dress code imposed by the Taliban has led to a further escalation in the repression faced by women and girls in the country. The Taliban have been steadily increasing their discriminatory restrictions on women and girls, while continuing their crackdown on any form of dissent with the use of torture, imprisonment and enforced disappearance targeting scores of women and girls, women rights activists and journalists, which together may amount to the crime against humanity of gender persecution.
Top image: UN Security Council President and Ecuador’s Permanent Representative, Jose de la Gasca (C), flanked by other UN ambassadors, speaks to the press prior to a security council meeting about the situation in Afghanistan at UN headquarters in New York City on December 20, 2023. Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images.
