The Situation In Afghanistan Under Review By The United Nations
UN Women, as part of its ongoing #PushForward4GenderEquality strategy, hosted the flagship side event at CSW68. (Photo courtesy UN Women)
(ANALYSIS) On April 29, 2024, Afghanistan was reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review working group.
The UPR is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls for each U.N. member state to undergo a peer review of its human rights records every 4 to 5 years. The UPR provides each state the opportunity to regularly report on the actions it has taken to improve its human rights situations and receive recommendations.
As the UPR was looking into the situation in Afghanistan, atrocity crimes continued. On the same day as the U.N. review, a gunman stormed a mosque in Andisheh town of Guzara district in Herat province, western Afghanistan. Six people were killed in the attack. The mosque is said to have belonged to Afghanistan’s minority Shiite community.
For now, no group has claimed the attack. However, the Islamic State group (also known as ISIL, ISIS) chapter in the region, Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), is known to frequently target Shiite communities. Only a week earlier, a sticky bomb exploded in a mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kabul, Kot-e-Sangi, killing one person and wounding three others. Previous months have seen several similar attacks.
The Shiite communities in Afghanistan, primarily comprising the Hazara, have been facing systematic discrimination, targeted attacks, marginalization and harassment under the Taliban’s rule.
In 2023, the Taliban reportedly prevented the Shiite from celebrating an important religious festival, restricted the teaching of Shiite jurisprudence in universities, and banned marriages between Shiite and Sunnis in parts of Afghanistan, among others. The Taliban has been failing to protect the Shiite community from IS-K attacks, and very little is known whether the attacks have been investigated and the perpetrators brought to account.
Also, as the UPR was considering the situation in Afghanistan, women and girls have been virtually erased from society. Among others, since taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban banned girls from secondary education under the pretext of safety.
Malala Yousafzai, human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate commented: “If you are a girl in Afghanistan, the Taliban has decided your future for you. You cannot attend secondary school or university. You cannot find open libraries where you can read. You see your mothers confined, unable to work, go to the park, get a haircut, or even see a doctor.” Subsequent months have seen a litany of restrictions that confined women and girls to their homes.
Among others, in November 2022, the authorities banned access to women and girls at parks, gyms and public baths. In December 2022, they announced the immediate suspension of women from universities. Also, in December 2023, women were barred from working for domestic and international nongovernmental organizations.
Because of the ever-present restrictions experienced by women and girls in Afghanistan, Afghan women human rights defenders and international experts have been calling for the recognition of the treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan as gender apartheid. While gender apartheid is not codified as an international crime yet, the topic has been receiving some attention, especially as the oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan is ever-growing and their rights are virtually nonexistent.
The litany of human rights violations in Afghanistan requires an urgent response. Unfortunately, as the U.N. was reviewing the situation in Afghanistan, the Taliban de facto authorities were nowhere to face the criticism. Despite the Taliban wanting to be recognized as the rightful authorities and take a spot on the international fora, the Taliban have shown zero willingness to engage and ensure that minimum standards on human rights are afforded to everyone in the country.
This piece was republished from Forbes with permission.
Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She’s authored the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 UN reports. She works on the topic of genocide and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities around the world. She is on X @EwelinaUO.