KABUL: A senior Taliban leader has dismissed the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) recent resolution condemning Afghanistan’s growing restrictions on women, calling on the council to abandon its “failed policy of pressure”.
The resolution passed unanimously on Thursday, criticised the Taliban’s ban on women working for the world body and NGOs in Afghanistan as a violation of human rights and humanitarian principles.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Afghan Taliban has imposed a strict interpretation of Sharia law, which has been described as “gender-based apartheid” by the United Nations.
In Afghanistan, women have been prevented from working in most government jobs, as well as NGOs, and have been barred from most secondary education and universities. They have also been banned from public spaces, such as gyms and parks.
Anas Haqqani, a senior leader in the Taliban movement, criticised the Security Council’s resolution on Twitter, saying that any position adopted that is not based on a deep understanding won’t give the desired results and will always be ineffective.
Haqqani called on the council to remove diplomatic and financial sanctions placed on Taliban officials, which he said amounted to collective punishment of Afghans.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Vasily Nebenzia, criticised the resolution, saying that more ambitious approaches and texts were blocked by Western colleagues. He also called on the United States to return the $7 billion in Afghan central bank assets that were frozen after the Taliban seized power.
Amnesty International welcomes UNSC’s resolution
Amnesty International welcomed the Security Council’s resolution, but the group said it fell short of setting out concrete steps that member states should take to help restore the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and to hold the Taliban rulers accountable.
The United Nations announced on April 4 that the Taliban had banned Afghan women from working in its offices countrywide, several months after issuing an edict against Afghan women working for NGOs. The move sparked widespread condemnation and a UN review of its operations in Afghanistan.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has organised a meeting in Doha next week with envoys from various countries to “reinvigorate the international engagement around the common objectives for a durable way forward on the situation in Afghanistan”. The United Nations has stressed the dire economic and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and the critical importance of a continued presence of the UN mission in Afghanistan and other UN agencies.
