The Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan could amount to a crime against humanity, according to a U.N. report presented on Monday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The Taliban seized power in August 2021, drastically curtailing women’s freedoms and rights, including their ability to attend high school and university.
In a report covering July to December 2022, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, found that the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls “may amount to gender persecution, a crime against humanity”. “The Taliban’s intentional and calculated policy is to repudiate the human rights of women and girls and to erase them from public life,” Bennett told the United Nations Human Rights Council. “It may amount to the international crime of gender persecution for which the authorities can be held accountable.”—Agencies
