Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, has said that women and girls in Afghanistan face a range of highly discriminatory policies and practices imposed by the Taliban.
In his latest report, Bennett said on Monday, September 7, that the Taliban justify violent measures against women as efforts to protect women’s rights based on Islam and Afghan culture.
He added that these policies have used coercion to control important aspects of the lives of women and girls.
Bennett warned that the continuation of these policies could “amount to the crime against humanity of gender-based persecution.”
The report also says that the process of formalizing the Taliban’s discriminatory policies has accelerated over the past two years, with the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice being one example.
