The ICJ today called on the UN Human Rights Council and its Member States to ensure accountability for gross human rights violations of women and girls in Afghanistan.
The statement reads as follows:
“Mr President,
The ICJ welcomes the convening of this urgent debate.
The Taliban are attempting to strip Afghan women of the full spectrum of their civil, political, economic, cultural, and social rights.
The Taliban have ordered women and girls to stay at home unless necessary and then only if their bodies and faced are covered. Women are rapidly losing their ability to participate in paid work outside the home. Girls’ secondary school education has not resumed despite months of promises by the Taliban.
These discriminatory edicts and practices, enforced by brutal displays of public violence, are widespread and systematic and akin to a sort of ‘gender apartheid.’
Reports of repression of religious and ethnic minorities, in particular the mainly Shi’a Hazara community, as well as of enforced disappearances, forcible abductions, extrajudicial killings, proliferate across the country belying the Taliban’s promises of reforming their behavior and returning Afghanistan to peace.
The ICJ appreciates the quick and thorough work of the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan in highlighting these gross and systematic violations, and we note and echo his call for increased commitment to accountability for the perpetrators, especially for those directing the unprecedented discrimination targeting women and girls.
I thank you.”
Contact:
Massimo Frigo, ICJ UN Representative, e: massimo.frigo(a)icj.org, t: +41797499949