Women in Afghanistan are afraid to go out due to new restrictions on their rights. Roza Otunbaeva: many Afghan women are afraid to go out Women
The de facto authorities of Afghanistan have recently further limited women’s rights in all spheres of public life. Women deemed not to fully comply with the hijab decree are subject to arrest and detention. Some Afghan women are afraid to go out, Roza Otunbaeva, Special Representative of the Secretary General in Afghanistan and head of the UN mission in that country, told Security Council members on Wednesday.
In early January, the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice began to actively enforce the hijab decree issued in April 2022, arresting and detaining women and girls found not to comply with it in Kabul and other provinces. These arrests disproportionately affected urban women. Other de facto institutions have defended the arrests, arguing for the need for order, rejecting international criticism and emphasizing that it is an internal matter.
“Recent arbitrary detentions for alleged violations of Islamic dress -codes became a further violation of human rights and led to incredible stigmatization of women and girls,” Otunbaeva said. “This also affected the entire female population of the country; many Afghan women are generally afraid to appear in public.” The UN representative called on the de facto authorities to lift the restrictions imposed. “The longer they last, the more harm they will cause,” the speaker added.
In Kabul, a large number of women and girls were detained and detained for several hours. The UN mission documented allegations of ill-treatment, incommunicado detention and ransom demands for the release of relatives.
Read also:
INTERVIEW | Roza Otunbaeva: in dialogue with the de facto authorities of Afghanistan, one must be patient
The de facto authorities, as Otunbaeva noted, continue to use corporal punishment in public places. As reported in the latest report of the UN Secretary General on Afghanistan, on November 10, in the city of Zaranj, Nimroz province, 25 men were publicly flogged (each of them received from one to 50 blows) at the central sports stadium after the city court found them guilty of various crimes. crimes including robbery and adultery. More than a dozen men who were seen filming the punishment were also flogged.
In her report to members of the Security Council, Roza Otunbaeva also touched on the security situation and issues economic development and humanitarian assistance. She said that the de facto authorities in Afghanistan would like international recognition of their legitimacy. “But they understand that this is not easy, since they do not comply with a large number of international standards,” she emphasized. “There are those in the government who understand the need to change this state of affairs, but someone higher up says, ‘no, women and girls must remain in the shadows.’”