While women and girls in Afghanistan continue to face sweeping restrictions on education, work and movement, the Taliban authorities have rejected international reports of rights violations against women. Saif-ul-Islam Khaibar, spokesman for the Taliban\u2019s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, claimed that women now enjoy rights that, he said, are unprecedented in Afghanistan\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
In a video message on Sunday, Khaibar said women\u2019s basic rights, including mahr, maintenance, inheritance and some other rights, have been secured by the Taliban authorities. He also described reports of women\u2019s rights violations by the Taliban as baseless.<\/p>\n
The remarks come as international bodies, including the United Nations, have repeatedly reported widespread and deliberate violations of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. According to these reports, since the Taliban returned to power, women have been barred from secondary and higher education and have also lost a large share of their job opportunities.<\/p>\n
Restrictions on women\u2019s movement have also been among the measures widely criticised. Under these restrictions, women need to be accompanied by a male guardian in order to travel, making access to education, work and everyday life more difficult.<\/p>\n
Restrictions on women\u2019s education and work in the health sector have also made access to medical services more difficult for women and girls. International bodies have warned that the shortage of female health workers and the continuation of these restrictions could have serious consequences for women\u2019s health, including a higher risk of maternal mortality.<\/p>\n
A UN special rapporteur on human rights previously said the Taliban\u2019s policies had created an institutionalised system of discrimination, repression and deprivation against women and girls. He warned that this situation could amount to \u201cgender persecution\u201d as a crime against humanity.<\/p>\n
The United Nations has also described the restrictions imposed on women\u2019s education, work, movement, social and political participation, and access to health services as part of a broad and systematic pattern of gender-based repression. The Taliban has consistently rejected these assessments and claims its policies are in line with Islamic law and Afghan culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taliban authorities reject reports of widespread rights abuses against women in Afghanistan as UN and rights groups raise alarm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22274","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\/22274","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=22274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}