Afghanistan-  The most serious women’s rights crisis in the world, the UN says.

There’s no end to the Taliban’s malevolence against womankind in Afghanistan

By Rosie DiMannoStar Columnist

June 23, 2024 – “Our mission is to enforce Sharia law … You may call it a violation of women’s rights when we publicly stone or flog them for committing adultery because they conflict with your democratic principles. Just as you may claim to be striving for the freedom of entire humanity, so do I. I represent Allah, and you represent Satan.’’

— Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, in a message aired on Afghanistan state television in March, addressing international criticism of the draconian regime’s human rights record.

What was already horrific beyond imagining has become rampantly worse. Because there’s no end to the Taliban’s malevolence against womankind.

Public flogging and stoning of females accused of adultery has been reinstated. Girls have been banned from education beyond primary grades. They’re forbidden to travel outside their home unless accompanied by a male guardian. Not allowed to enter playgrounds and public parks. Barred from gyms, public baths or even picnics in the countryside.

Beauty salons — hairdressing one of the few occupations which had been permitted — have been shuttered. The long list of jobs proscribed for women includes just about every profession, with exceptions made only — under severe limitations — in the fields of teaching and health care. Some remain in the civil service, where women had made such a huge contribution during the two decades when the Taliban was driven from power, but last week their salaries were slashed to a less than $70 (U.S.) a month.

There are no longer policewomen, female judges, lawyers and journalists.

They can’t work for NGOs or UN agencies.

In the past year alone, the Taliban passed 52 prohibitive edicts and decrees against women and girls, relentlessly enforced.

There was a flicker of time when the world was moved by such staggering oppression and abuse. That wasn’t why the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban regime but it was definitely a tangential consequence — loosening of tyrannical brutality. In the cities at least, many women discarded their oppressive burqas, turned unveiled faces toward the promise of a better future.

Every promise has been broken since U.S. forces chaotically bolted from Afghanistan in August 2021 — the ugliest stain on President Joe Biden’s presidency, abandoning Afghans to their miserable fate as the Taliban flooded back to seize power.

The situation in Afghanistan today is the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan said last week, tabling his most recent report, which marked 1,000 days since the ban on adolescent girls attending school was imposed.

“The Taliban’s institutionalization of its system of oppression of women and girls, and the harms that it’s continuing to entrench, should shock the conscience of humanity,” Richard Bennett said, while presenting the report to the 56th session of the Human Rights Council. “These violations are so severe and extensive that they appear to form a widespread systemic attack on a civilian population which may amount to crimes against humanity. This attack is not only ongoing, it is intensifying.”

While “gender apartheid” hasn’t been codified as a crime against humanity — apartheid a word thrown around too often these days — “it most accurately denotes the institutionalized oppression that characterizes Taliban governance,” argued Bennett. “Codification of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity would properly reflect its status as a crime that shocks the conscience of humanity and violates jus cogens, a peremptory norm of international law.”

He asked for an international mechanism to hold the Taliban accountable, through the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

What is the UN going to do about it? Nothing. What is the world going to do about it? Nothing.

We did try, at a tremendous loss of soldier lives, including 158 members of the Canadian Armed Forces, 1,144 allied troops and 2,324 U.S. military personnel, as Washington poured $2.3 trillion into the war campaign. But it was all fated to end in ruins when then-president Donald Trump cut a deal with the Taliban in 2020, assuring all U.S. troops would withdraw within 14 months in exchange for the Taliban agreeing to not let Afghanistan again become a haven for terrorists and stop attacking American service members.

What a windfall for the long-game-playing Taliban, who’ve never met a vow they couldn’t smash to smithereens.

Dozens of terrorist groups are now operating in Afghanistan, including al-Qaida and Islamic State.

No country has recognized the Taliban government but Russia and China are moving toward it.

Within days of receiving Bennett’s report, it was confirmed that the Taliban will participate in a third round of talks in Doha at the end of the month, with envoys from 22 countries, intended to set out a course for international engagement with Afghanistan. Activists are enraged that the UN made major concessions to get the Taliban there, after the regime hadn’t been invited to the first round and set unacceptable conditions for attending the second in February — including demands that civil society members be excluded and that the Taliban be treated as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.

No Afghan woman will be attending.

WUNRN

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/06/24/un-meeting-blocks-afghan-women-agenda-participation

No end to the Taliban’s malevolence against womankind (thestar.com)