Afghan women rights activist Mahbouba Seraj demanded from the world to help women and girls from being “erased from existence” by the Taliban: “You’ve got to do something.”
Afghan women rights activist Mahbouba Seraj demanded from the world to help women and girls from being “erased from existence” by the Taliban.
“Today, human rights in Afghanistan do not exist,” Seraj told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva adding that 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.
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, as many as 700 people have been killed and 1,400 wounded, a report released last month by the UN political mission in the country said.
It highlighted how women have been stripped of many of their human rights, barred from secondary education and subjected to restrictions on their movements.
“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.
“Women of that country, we don’t exist… We are erased,” Seraj told the council and 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.
“You’ve got to do something.”
‘Gender apartheid’
She and others suggested the council could create an independent group of experts to monitor all abuses, with an eye to eventually hold perpetrators to account.
Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on the rights situation in Afghanistan, also stressed the urgent need to strengthen accountability, suggesting the situation could be described as “gender apartheid.”
Earlier Monday, Bennett had presented his first report on the overall rights situation, warning the council that “Afghans are trapped in a human rights crisis that the world has seemed powerless to address.”
Source: France 24