: UN agencies recommitment to women, girls in Afghanistan one year after Taliban takeover #IndiaNEWS #International A year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan has led to a deterioration in the lives of women

Posted in: #IndiaNEWS #International #Afghanistan

UN agencies recommitment to women, girls in Afghanistan one year after Taliban takeover #IndiaNEWS #International
A year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan has led to a deterioration in the lives of women and girls, affecting all aspects of their human rights, three UN agencies reported on Monday.

“It has been a year of increasing disrespect for their right to live free and equal lives, denying them opportunity to livelihoods, access to health care and education, and escape from situations of violence,�? said Sima Bahous, Executive Director at UN Women.

What is happening in #Afghanistan is an alarm bell for us all.
It shows how decades of progress on gender equality and women’s rights can be wiped out in months.
The fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan is a global fight, and a battle for women’s rights everywhere. pic. twitter. com/CMV8puevUq
— UN Women (@UN_Women) August 15, 2022

Ms. Bahous outlined how the Taliban’s “meticulously constructed policies of inequality�? have set Afghanistan apart from the rest of the international community, wiping out decades of progress on gender equality and women’s rights in mere months.
‘Terrible act of self-sabotage’
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from going to high school and effectively barred from political participation, as the Taliban has an all-male cabinet and there is no Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
Afghan women are now mostly restricted from working outside the home, they must cover their faces in public, and they have to be accompanied by a male chaperone when they travel. Furthermore, they continue to be subjected to multiple forms of gender-based violence.
“This deliberate slew of measures of discrimination against Afghanistan’s women and girls is also a terrible act of self-sabotage for a country experiencing huge challenges, including from climate-related and natural disasters to exposure to global economic headwinds that leave some 25 million Afghan people in poverty and many hungry,�? she said.
Afghanistan remains in the grip of a deep economic and humanitarian crisis, as the head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Natalia Kanem, pointed out.
Lives at risk
Soaring food and fuel prices – worsened by a drought and the war in Ukraine – mean that roughly 95 per cent of the population, and nearly all female-headed households, do not get enough to eat.
Ms. Kanem said keeping girls out of secondary school not only violates their right to education and prevents them from realizing their full potential, it but also puts them at increased risk of early marriage, early pregnancy, violence and abuse.
“The breakdown of the health system has compromised women and girls’ access to reproductive health services, including maternal health care, particularly for the more than nine million people living in remote areas of the country.