Several members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have urged the Afghan Taliban to end its repressive treatment of women in Afghanistan, as the group continued to impose restrictive policies on their education and work.
\nAccording to international media reports, the 15-member UNSC met privately on Friday \u2013 at the request of the United Arab Emirates and Japan \u2013 to discuss the decisions by the Taliban-led administration, which seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 following the US troop withdrawal.
\nSince then, the Taliban has squeezed women out of almost all areas of public life, banning them from secondary and higher education, public sector work and visiting parks.
\n\u201cWe urge the Taliban to immediately reverse all oppressive measures against women and girls,\u201d said Japanese Ambassador Ishikane Kimihiro, speaking on behalf of 11 members of the Security Council, on Friday.
\nThe 11 members \u2013 Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Japan, Malta, Switzerland, the UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States \u2013 called on the Taliban to \u201crespect the rights of women and girls, and their full, equal and meaningful participation and inclusion across all aspects of society in Afghanistan, from political and economic, to education and public space\u201d.
\nThey also called on the authorities in Afghanistan to reverse bans on women working for aid groups or attending universities and high school.
\nSeveral international aid groups have suspended their work in Afghanistan because of the latest ban, which was announced by the Taliban government on December 24.
\n\u201cThe situation of women and girls in Afghanistan must remain high on the agenda of the Security Council,\u201d said Friday\u2019s statement.
\nThe United Nations has said 97 percent of Afghans live in poverty, two-thirds of the population need aid to survive, and 20 million people face acute hunger.
\nAs per reports, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell described the ban on female aid workers as \u201cboth wrong and dangerous\u201d, according to her prepared remarks for the private Security Council meeting on Friday.
\n\u201cIt is not hyperbole to say that without them, lives will be lost, children will die,\u201d she said.
\nAustralia\u2019s men\u2019s team recently withdrew from a cricket series against Afghanistan scheduled for March following further restrictions on women\u2019s and girls\u2019 rights imposed by the Taliban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have urged the Afghan Taliban to end its repressive treatment of women in Afghanistan, as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4243,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}