Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has called on Pakistan to stop the forced return of Afghans who would face the risk of abuse, torture and other serious human rights violations if sent back.<\/p>\n
On Friday, 27 September, he wrote on X that at-risk Afghans should have access to a safe and accessible process for submitting information, individual assessment and protection against forced deportation.<\/p>\n
Bennett expressed particular concern about the situation of women and girls, unaccompanied children, human rights defenders, journalists, former government employees and former security forces personnel, groups he said could face serious threats if they return.<\/p>\n
He also warned against the forced return of Afghan students studying medicine and dentistry in Pakistan, stressing that this is even more concerning for female students, as their access to higher education in Afghanistan has been severely restricted.<\/p>\n
The UN special rapporteur said the principle of non-refoulement must be respected, a principle under which no one should be sent to a place where they face a real risk of serious human rights violations.<\/p>\n
As the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett is mandated to examine the human rights situation in Afghanistan and report to UN bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UN rapporteur Richard Bennett urges Pakistan to stop forced returns of Afghans at risk of abuse, torture and rights violations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22152","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=22152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}