Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, has stated that the Taliban administration’s newly issued law on “religious preachers” does not comply with international human rights standards and raises serious concerns about religious discrimination.<\/p>\n
Bennett wrote on X on Wednesday, 9th of Saur, that the law was officially published and its provisions indicate that followers of the Hanafi sect are given priority. According to him, any legislation that causes the superiority of one religious sect over others contradicts the principles of non-discrimination in international documents.<\/p>\n
He emphasized that human rights protect religious and ethnic minorities, and governments are obligated to guarantee the rights of followers of all religions without discrimination. Bennett added that legal reviews and further analyses of this law are ongoing.<\/p>\n
Previously, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the leader of the Taliban administration, ratified the “Preachers Law” and stated that preachers must be Muslim and Hanafi sect followers. This condition was imposed despite Afghanistan’s religious diversity, where some citizens adhere to other Islamic and non-Islamic sects and beliefs.<\/p>\n
Since the Taliban’s return to power, the human rights situation, especially regarding religious freedoms, has faced extensive restrictions; a matter repeatedly criticized by international organizations and has raised concerns about increasing systemic discrimination in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UN Special Rapporteur criticizes Taliban’s new law on religious preachers for violating human rights and promoting religious discrimination in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-politics","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}