'We are erased': Afghan women demand action at United Nations
India Today
In an impassioned plea on Monday at the United Nations, Afghan women urged strong global action to tackle "gender apartheid" in their country since the Taliban took power in 2021.
Afghan women made an impassioned plea at the UN Monday for solid international action to address the "gender apartheid" in their country since the Taliban swept to power last year.
"Today, human rights in Afghanistan do not exist," Afghan journalist Mahbouba Seraj told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The outspoken journalist and rights activist said she was "sick and tired" of sounding the alarm over the decimation of the rights of women and girls, especially in Afghanistan, and seeing no action.
The Taliban have imposed harsh restrictions on girls and women to comply with their austere vision of Islam since returning to power in August last year -- effectively squeezing them out of public life.
The hardline Islamists have shut girls' secondary schools in most provinces and barred women from many government jobs.
They have also ordered women to fully cover up in public, ideally with an all-encompassing burqa.
"The women of Afghanistan are now left to the mercy of a group that is inherently anti-women and does not recognise women as human beings," Razia Sayad, an Afghan lawyer and former commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told the council.
