By Ebi Kesiena
Afghanistan women made an impassioned plea at the UN on Monday for solid international action to address the “gender apartheid” in their country since the Taliban swept to power last year.
Afghan Mahbouba Seraj told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that today, human rights in Afghanistan does not exist.
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.
Razia Sayad, an Afghan lawyer and former commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told the council that 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
“Women of that country, we don’t exist, We are erased,” she told the council during a debate focused specifically on the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.
She appealed to the top UN rights body to take any action possible to improve the situation. “I’m begging all of you: Please if this council has something to do, do it!” she said, adding that “otherwise, please don’t talk about it. Because talking has been cheap” when it comes to Afghanistan.
