Taliban in power in Afghanistan - UN chief demands cancellation of bans on women's employment and education

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday demanded that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan repeal its employment and education bans on women, calling them "unjustifiable human rights violations.

Before Mr. Guterres, his High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, had urged the Taliban to lift these "unimaginable restrictions" and warned of "terrible consequences" for "all the Afghan people. And the 15 members of the Security Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York said they were "deeply alarmed" by Kabul's decision to suspend women's access to university and to ban them from working in NGOs.

"The latest restrictions by the Taliban on the employment and education of women and girls are unjustifiable human rights violations and must be reversed," the UN secretary general wrote on Twitter. Guterres stressed that "acts to exclude and silence women and girls are still causing immense suffering and significant setbacks to the potential of the Afghan people." "No country can develop - or even survive - socially and economically if half of its population is excluded," Türk said in an earlier statement from Geneva. The Taliban, who took power in Kabul in August 2021 and whose authority is not recognized by most of the international community, have just banned women and girls from pursuing university studies and working in national or international NGOs within days of each other.