{"id":18967,"date":"2026-08-02T15:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/08\/02\/un-expert-cricket-ireland-invite-afghanistan-womens-team\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T15:00:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:00:21","slug":"un-expert-cricket-ireland-invite-afghanistan-womens-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/08\/02\/un-expert-cricket-ireland-invite-afghanistan-womens-team\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Rights Expert Urges Cricket Ireland to Invite Afghanistan Women&#8217;s Team and Recognize Them Officially"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has called on Cricket Ireland to facilitate matches for the Afghanistan women&#8217;s cricket team in the country and to support their official recognition.<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, July 31, Bennett wrote on X that Cricket Ireland could request the International Cricket Council to officially recognize the Afghanistan women&#8217;s team. He emphasized that this sports institution has the opportunity to take practical steps in support of gender equality.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bennett, supporting the Afghanistan women&#8217;s team would be a step towards defending the rights of Afghan female athletes, who in recent years have faced extensive restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>These remarks come as Cricket Ireland had previously announced that appropriate security measures had been taken for holding one-day international matches between the Irish men&#8217;s national team and Afghanistan. Since the Taliban&#8217;s return to power, women&#8217;s sports activities in Afghanistan have been severely restricted, with the women&#8217;s cricket team effectively barred from official participation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UN expert calls on Cricket Ireland to support and officially recognize Afghanistan women&#8217;s cricket team amid ongoing restrictions on female athletes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18967","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=18967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}