Hamish Falconer, the UK Deputy Foreign Secretary, emphasized the need for the international community to resist the Taliban administration’s policies against women and girls during a meeting with the Afghanistan women’s cricket team. Sharing images of the encounter on the social media platform X, he described the Taliban’s treatment of women as “horrific” and called for greater global attention to their plight.<\/p>\n
Falconer expressed his happiness at meeting the team again, noting that the players’ enthusiasm and motivation demonstrate why the world should not remain silent in the face of restrictions imposed on women in Afghanistan. Alongside team members, he visited the UK Parliament building, with part of the visit including a symbolic cricket match.<\/p>\n
“It is wonderful to meet again with the Afghan refugee women’s cricket team, show them the Parliament, and witness their cricket skills up close,” he said. The team traveled to the UK at the invitation of the England and Wales Cricket Board to participate in showcase matches.<\/p>\n
The Afghanistan women’s cricket team was established in 2010 but lost its official status as the national team following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. Over the past five years, the Taliban administration has banned women and girls from participating in all sports, a move seen as part of broader restrictions on their education, employment, and social presence.<\/p>\n
Most players have left the country amid political developments, with many now residing in Australia. On July 25, team members met King Charles III of the United Kingdom. Following this meeting, the British royal family stated that women and girls in Afghanistan are deprived of their right to engage in sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UK Deputy Foreign Secretary urges global resistance to Taliban’s harsh policies against women after meeting Afghanistan women’s cricket team in UK Parliament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16629","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=16629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}