The committee reviewed two conflicting communications regarding Afghanistan’s representation at the seventy-eighth session of the General Assembly.
The Islamic Emirate considers the UN members’ decision to not hand over the Afghanistan seat at the United Nations to its ambassador “illegal.”
This comes as the UN Credentials Committee has deferred its decision on assigning Afghanistan’s seat in the organization to the Islamic Emirate for the third consecutive time.
The committee reviewed two conflicting communications regarding Afghanistan’s representation at the seventy-eighth session of the General Assembly, both from the Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Emirate and Naseer Ahmad Faiq, who is the current Chargé d’Affaires of Afghanistan Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
“Afghanistan should take its seat as soon as possible; but we should be happy about it, that the seat has not been suspended for now because if so, that would be another major challenge. If the situation becomes better in the country, the possibility of regaining the seat is high,” said Toreq Farhadi, a political analyst.
But the Islamic Emirate, in reaction to the decision of the UN regarding the fate of Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations, said not handing it over to the Islamic Emirate’s ambassador is “illegal and unfair.”
“As the UN has not given this seat to the Islamic Emirate, we consider this action illegal, unfair, a discriminatory action which damages the reputation and credibility of the [United Nations],” said Suhail Shaheen, the Islamic Emirate’s designated permanent representative to the UN.
“To attract international support, it is first of all important to focus on the issue of recognition of Afghanistan which is linked to bringing reforms within the current government in Afghanistan,” said Najib Rahman Shamal, a political analyst.
“The UN seat was important for Afghanistan. It was a bridge between us and the world. Unfortunately we have been out of the international community for the past two and a half years,” said Kamran Aman, a political analyst.
The UN was established in 1945 and Afghanistan became its member in 1946.
Islamic Emirate Considers Witholding of UN Seat ‘Illegal’
Sohaila often feeds her youngest child tea as she has nothing more nutritious to give her
“The last time I was able to buy milk for my baby was two months ago. Normally I just fill the [feeding] bottle with tea. Or I soak bread in tea and then feed it to her,” Sohaila Niyazi says, sitting on the floor of her mud brick home up a hill in eastern Kabul.
There are no roads to her house – you have to walk up steep mud tracks with sewage flowing by the side of them.
Sohaila is a widow. She has six children, her youngest a 15-month-old girl named Husna Fakeeri. The tea that Sohaila refers to is what’s traditionally drunk in Afghanistan, made with green leaves and hot water, without any milk or sugar. It contains nothing that’s of any nutritional value for her baby.
Sohaila is one of the 10 million people who have stopped receiving emergency food assistance from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) over the past year – cuts necessitated by a massive funding shortfall. It’s a crushing blow, especially for the estimated two million households run by women in Afghanistan.
Under Taliban rule, Sohaila says she can’t go out to work and feed her family.
“There have been nights when we have had nothing to eat. I say to my children, where can I go begging at this time of night? They sleep in a state of hunger and when they wake up I wonder what I should do. If a neighbour brings us some food the children scramble, saying ‘give me, give me’. I try to split it between them to calm them down,” Sohaila says.
To calm her hungry baby girl, Sohaila says she gives her “sleep medicine”.
“I give it so that she doesn’t wake up and ask for milk because I have no milk to give her. After giving her the medicine, she sleeps from one morning to the next,” says Sohaila. “Sometimes I check to see if she’s alive or dead.”
We inquire about the medicine she’s giving her daughter and find that it is a common antihistamine or anti-allergy drug. Sedation is a side effect.
Sohaila says her husband was a civilian killed in crossfire in Panjshir province in 2022, in fighting between Taliban forces and those resisting Taliban rule. After his death, she depended heavily on the aid given by the WFP – flour, oil and beans.
Now the WFP says it’s able to provide supplies to only three million people – less than a quarter of those experiencing acute hunger.
Sohaila is entirely reliant on donations from relatives or neighbours.
For much of the time that we are there, baby Husna is quiet and inactive.
She is moderately malnourished, one of more than three million children suffering from the condition in the country, according to Unicef. More than a quarter of those have the worst form of it – severe acute malnutrition. It’s the worst it’s ever been in Afghanistan, the United Nations says.
And while malnutrition is ravaging the country’s youngest, aid which had prevented healthcare from collapsing has had to be withdrawn.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was paying the salaries of health workers, and funding medicines and food at more than 30 hospitals – an emergency stopgap measure implemented following the regime change in 2021.
Now it doesn’t have the resources to continue, and aid has been withdrawn from most health facilities, including Afghanistan’s only children’s hospital, Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul.
“The salary of doctors and nurses comes from the government now. They have all had their pay cut by half,” Dr Mohammad Iqbal Sadiq, the Taliban-appointed medical director of the hospital, tells us.
The hospital has also closed its outpatient department and is providing services only for those who need to be admitted to the hospital.
The malnutrition ward is full, and on many days, they have to fit more than one child in a bed.
In one corner Sumaya sits upright. At 14 months she weighs as much as a newborn baby, her tiny face wrinkled like that of a much older person.
Next to her is Mohammad Shafi. He weighs half of what he should at 18 months. His father was a Taliban fighter, killed in a road accident. His mother died of an illness.
When we pass his bedside his elderly grandmother, Hayat Bibi, comes to us looking distraught, wanting to tell her story.
Mohammad is cared for by his grandmother. His father was killed in a road accident and his mother died from an illness
She says the Taliban helped bring her grandson to the hospital, but she doesn’t know how they will get by.
“I’m relying on the mercy of God. I have nowhere else to turn to. I’m totally lost,” Hayat Bibi says, her eyes welling up. “I’m struggling myself. My head hurts so much I feel like it might explode.”
We asked the Taliban government’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, what they were doing to convince the international community to give more aid.
“Aid has been cut because the economies of donor countries are not doing well. And there have been two big calamities – Covid and the war in Ukraine. So we can’t expect help from them. We won’t get aid by talking to them,” he told us.
“We have to become self-reliant. Our economy has stabilised and we are giving out mining contracts which will create thousands of jobs. But of course, I’m not saying aid should be cut because we still have challenges.”
Did he recognise that Taliban policies were a part of the problem too; that donors didn’t want to give money to a country where the government had imposed stringent restrictions on women?
“If aid is being used as a pressure tool then the Islamic Emirate has its own values which it will safeguard at any cost. Afghans have made big sacrifices in the past to protect our values and will endure the cutting of aid too,” Mr Mujahid said.
His words will not comfort many Afghans. Two-thirds of the country’s people don’t know where their next meal will come from.
In a cold, damp, one-room home off a street in Kabul we meet a woman who says she’s been stopped by the Taliban from selling fruit, vegetables, socks and other odd items on the street. She says she’s also been detained once. Her husband was killed during the war and she has four children to provide for. She doesn’t want to be named.
She breaks down inconsolably minutes into talking about her situation.
“They should at least allow us to work and earn an honest living. I swear to God we are not going out to do bad things. We only go to earn food for our children and they harass us like this,” she says.
This mother of four says she was stopped from selling food on the street
She’s now been forced to send her 12-year-old son out to work.
“I asked one Taliban brother, what do I feed my children if I don’t earn? He said give them poison but don’t come outside your home,” she says. “Two times the Taliban government gave me some money, but it is nowhere close to enough.”
Prior to the Taliban takeover, three-quarters of public spending came from foreign money given directly to the previous regime. It was stopped in August 2021, sending the economy into a spiral.
Aid agencies stepped in to provide a temporary but critical bridge.
Much of that funding has now gone.
It is hard to overstate the severity of the situation. We have seen it over and over again this past year.
Millions are surviving on dry bread and water. Some will not make it through the winter.
Additional reporting by Imogen Anderson. Photos by Aamir Peerzada.
Afghanistan: ‘I have to sedate my hungry baby due to aid cuts’
Edris Niazi had “a normal life,” back in Kabul, working as a government employee, but his life “turned upside down” after the Taliban seized power in 2021.
Niazi, 32, is now working as a welder in Turkey’s Kayseri province with “no future,” as he fears being deported to Afghanistan.
“There is no way that I return to Afghanistan,” Niazi said. “My life is in danger, and I would try whatever it takes to go to a third country, either through legal or illegal routes.”
Many urban, educated Afghans like Niazi escaped after Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban.
According to the U.N., more than 1.6 million Afghans have fled since August 2021, bringing the total number of Afghan refugees in the neighboring countries to 8.2 million.
“Turkey is not the place that one would like to stay in it permanently,” Niazi said. “Turkey serves as a bridge” for refugees hoping to go to Europe.
Waiting for relocation
Many Afghan families in Turkey have been waiting for resettlement in third countries for years.
Munir Mansoori, who fled with his family to Turkey in 2016, is still waiting to be relocated to a third country.
“We have tried all the venues [for relocation] but our efforts have yet to yield results,” said Mansoori, who worked as a journalist with Ariana TV back in Afghanistan.
“Here in Turkey, we can’t work in our profession. We can’t work here. It is a different country with a different culture and language,” he said.
He said that he is afraid of deportation as his life would be in danger in Afghanistan.
“I am afraid of being deported. I received threats because I was hosting a music show in Afghanistan before coming to Turkey,” he added.
Ali Hikmat, the co-founder of the Afghan Refugee Solidarity Association, told VOA that in just one week in November, “Turkey arrested 820 Afghans in the eastern part of Turkey and deported them by air to Kabul.”
Hikmat added that Afghans are also pushed back to Iran via the land border.
Last year, Human Rights Watch reported that Turkey was “routinely” pushing back tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to Iran or sending them back to Afghanistan, “with little or no examination of their claims for international protection.”
Based on the information provided by the Turkish authorities, HRW reported that Turkey deported 44,768 Afghans by air to Kabul in the first eight months of 2022.
Worries about education
Shabnam Mohammadi was in high school in Afghanistan’s western province of Herat when the Taliban seized power in 2021.
She, together with her parents and three brothers, left Afghanistan two months after the takeover and crossed the border to Iran and then to Turkey.
Mohammadi told VOA that as soon as the family reached Turkey, they “applied for relocation [to a third country] but heard nothing.”
“It is difficult here. We left everything behind and had to start from the beginning,” she said, “We can’t go to school. We don’t have a future here and can’t go to Afghanistan.”
Mohammadi added that the family still hopes to be resettled in a third country where she and her brothers can attend school.
“But now that we are in Turkey, it is not clear what is going to happen to us,” she said.
Mohammadi said that she would not be able to go to school or work if she returned to Afghanistan.
After seizing power in 2021, the Taliban banned girls’ secondary and university education. Women are also barred from working with NGOs, going to parks and gyms and long-distance traveling without a male chaperone.
“Like everyone else,” Niazi said, “I would like to go to a place where my daughter can get an education. I want her to have a better future.”
This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
Afghan Refugees in Turkey Hope for Relocation, Fear Deportation
Intl Migrants Day has arrived while Afghanistan witnessed the deportation of thousands of migrants from Pakistan, Iran and other countries in recent months.
Coinciding with International Migrants Day, the senior officials of the Islamic Emirate on Monday in a ceremony asked the countries not to use Afghan immigrants as a political tool.
Criticizing the deportation of Afghan immigrants by some neighboring countries, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy prime minister for economic affairs, asked these countries to deal legally with Afghan immigrants.
International Migrants Day has arrived while Afghanistan witnessed the deportation of thousands of migrants from Pakistan, Iran and other countries in recent months.
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said: “The expulsion of our Muslim brothers by the countries is an illegal decision and against fairness and good neighborliness. The perpetrators failed to achieve the goals that were behind this persecution [expulsion].”
Second Deputy Prime Minister, Abdul Salam Hanafi, who was present at the ceremony at the Government Media and Information Center (GMIC), said: “A large number of our brothers and sisters returned to their homeland from different countries, the number of them reaches more than 700,000, who came to Afghanistan in a short time and by force.”
The Islamic Emirate’s Prime Minister, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund, in a message on the occasion of International Migrants Day, asked international institutions to support the rights of Afghan immigrants.
Khalil Rahman Haqqani, the acting Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, discussed the causes of illegal migrations in the country during the commemoration of the International Migrants Day.
Khalil Rahman Haqqani, the acting minister for refugees and repatriation, said: “Afghans were tortured by different countries and are present all over the world. Even now, after forty years of sadness and poverty, they destroyed their property, children, culture and customs.”
The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation has also announced the creation of fifteen committees, including the land distribution committee, to deal with the problems of immigrants who have just returned to the country.
Kabul Calls on Host Nations to Not Use Afghan Refugees Politically
By Hilary Whiteman, Anna Coren and Abdul Basir Bina
Karachi, Pakistan
Arzo is so weak she spends most of her day lying on a thin mattress in a dimly lit room under a ceiling fan that steadily circulates the polluted air of Pakistan’s largest city.
To pass the time, she watches makeup videos on her cellphone, the glow of the screen illuminating the faded freckles of a teenager whose skin now rarely sees the sun.
Arzo is a long way from her home in Afghanistan, where she lived with her parents before being smuggled across the border for medical treatment.
Her older brother and sister, Ahamad and Mahsa, now care for her in a rented room in Karachi, their temporary refuge from life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
“Don’t worry,” whispers Ahamad, as he kisses Arzo’s hand. “You will be fine. Don’t worry, we are with you always. I’m hoping you will be fine soon.”
CNN is not using Arzo’s or her siblings’ real names because they fear reprisals from the Taliban, and being discovered by Pakistani officials, who have deported more than 26,000 Afghans since announcing a crackdown on undocumented migrants in October.
Being forcibly returned to Afghanistan would mean certain death for the 15-year-old, her siblings say, because she needs medical care they say isn’t available in their home country.
The siblings don’t normally talk about why their little sister is so unwell – they don’t want to upset her. As they told CNN their story, Arzo silently wept.
A girl with ambition
Arzo dances barefoot in jeans to pop music with her sisters inside a home in Afghanistan. She smiles as she twists her hands in time with the beat.
Ahamad said the video was filmed six months after the Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021. Schools were closed but his sisters were confident they would reopen.
They didn’t. Instead, the Taliban gradually reimposed the repressive policies that shrank the role of women in society during their previous rule from 1996 to 2001, despite assurances they wouldn’t.
Women are banned from most workplaces, universities, national parks, gyms and going anywhere in public without a male chaperone.
And girls are no longer educated beyond sixth grade.
Afghan women once worked in this popular national park. Now they’re not even allowed to visit
Mahsa had already graduated high school, but Arzo still had three years ahead of her.
When their village school closed, their worried father sent his daughters to study English at an education center in Kabul, but that soon shut, too.
Back at home, Mahsa took up tailoring to pass the time. But Arzo drifted deeper into depression.
“Most of the time she said, ‘I hope we should move from this place, I don’t want to be here, there is no education and I want to become a doctor,’” Mahsa recalled Arzo saying.
One day in July, Mahsa walked downstairs to find her sister staring at her with bulging eyes.
“I asked her, ‘What happened to you?’ She said that she drank acid. I didn’t believe it, so I put my fingers in her mouth and she vomited up blood,” Mahsa said.
Doctors see rise in suicides
Experts say reliable statistics on suicide and suicide attempts aren’t compiled in Afghanistan, but rights groups and doctors say they’ve seen an increase under Taliban rule.
Dr. Shikib Ahmadi has been working six days a week and longer hours than ever, seeing patients at a mental health clinic in Afghanistan’s western Herat province. He’s using a pseudonym because he fears the Taliban will punish him for speaking to foreign media.
Ahmadi said the number of female patients at his clinic has surged 40% to 50% since the Taliban’s takeover two years ago. Around 10% of those patients kill themselves, he said.
Their lives restricted by the Taliban, girls and women are turning to cheap household items to attempt suicide, he said. Rat poison, liquid chemicals, cleaning fluids, and farming fertilizer – anything they think will ease their grief.
Ahmadi says he tries to tell them things will get better, that schools will reopen, that they can work at home while they wait, tailoring or doing something that gives them purpose.
But the truth is he doesn’t know if classes will ever resume, and his own hope is fading.
“I don’t see any good future for anyone in this country,” he said.
Another group of girls has just graduated from sixth grade – the end of their education under Taliban rules.
Ahmadi fears that will mean another wave of self-harm and suicide.
Taliban compounds misery for women in Afghanistan with order to close all beauty salons
“Last year, everyone had a hope that next year the schools will be open. The government promised that they will open the schools,” he said.
“But since this year, the schools are not open, so people lost their hopes. I feel like the number of suicides will increase.”
CNN has contacted the Taliban for comment about the reported rise in suicide among women.
In a statement provided by the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in January, the group claimed that female suicide rates had fallen since they came to power.
“In the last 20 years, there were many case (sic) of women committing suicide, but by the grace of Allah, we do not have such cases now,” the statement said.
The claim is contradicted by multiple reports, including from UN experts, who said in July that “reports of depression and suicide are widespread, especially among adolescent girls prevented from pursuing education.”
Arzo is fed fluids through a feeding tube while she waits for an operation to repair her wounds.
Javed Iqbal/CNN
The Taliban’s return
Arzo was born in 2008, seven years after the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban leaders the US accused of harboring al Qaeda terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks.
Under the Western-backed Afghan government, a devastating civil war raged for years, but life had nonetheless improved for Afghan women. Many started school, earned degrees and became role models for girls like Arzo and Mahsa.
But everything changed in 2021 when the US and its allies started pulling out of Afghanistan, creating space for the resurgence of Taliban fighters, who’d retreated to rural areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Back in power in the cities, the Taliban reimposed their radical Islamist ideology, carrying out extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, and unlawfully detaining anyone considered a threat to their leadership, according to rights groups.
Two years on from Taliban takeover, Afghan women are being ‘erased from everything’
Ayesha Ahmad, an associate professor in global health humanities at St. George’s University of London, was conducting in-depth interviews with women in Afghanistan who had fled domestic violence when the Taliban moved in.
“I will never forget the day of the takeover, the frantic calls and communications and the absolute terror that they were feeling because they knew what the reality would be, and they were right,” she said.
Now many more women are vulnerable to violence, she said, and some see suicide as the only escape, despite the cultural stigma and shame it would bring on their families.
“Suicide is a sin in Islam, and in this context of religious extremism, women are not going to be seen as a victim,” she said.
With little sympathy from the Taliban leaders who created this situation, Afghanistan’s women are looking outside their country for support.
Heather Barr, associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, said Afghan women worry the world is beginning to accept that what’s happening to them is normal.
“Everyone’s kind of shrugging and saying, ‘Well, it’s Afghanistan.’ It should be intolerable to all of us. Because what happens in Afghanistan, and how the international community does or doesn’t respond, has huge implications for women’s rights globally,” she said.
“We have to be saying to our governments that this can’t be seen as normal. This can’t be treated as just one more country with a domestic issue.”
‘I cry for her future’
Ahamad wasn’t in Afghanistan in July when his sister drank the acid.
He had already fled to Pakistan, fearing retribution from the Taliban for his work as a journalist before they took power. He told CNN his father and uncle took Arzo to a local doctor, who gave her some medicine and told them to go to Kabul if her condition worsened. It did.
In Kabul, a doctor said the acid had damaged her esophagus and stomach and she was unlikely to survive surgery. So, they decided to take her to Pakistan, where Ahamad was waiting with a doctor. Ahamad then took Arzo to Karachi, where another doctor inserted a feeding tube into her stomach.
That was three months ago. Since then, Ahamad says Arzo has steadily lost weight and now weighs about 25 kilograms or 55 pounds.
“Her situation is not good at all. The doctors installed the pipe to her stomach for feeding so she can gain weight and be ready for the real operation,” in January, Ahamad said.
“Maybe she won’t gain weight,” he said. “And maybe they won’t do the operation.”
Mahsa sits on the bed, her needle piercing fabric with enough precision to keep her mind focused on the task. She would like to return to study, but right now caring for her sister is all that matters.
“I can’t sleep at night because she is in pain,” Mahsa said.
The siblings know they’re taking a huge risk by speaking out – they fear the Taliban’s reach in Pakistan and for their parents, who are still living in Afghanistan.
But they’re desperate.
Neither can work, the siblings say, and they don’t have the $5,000 needed for Arzo’s surgery, as well as money for the room, food for themselves and the cans of powdered milk and juice they need to keep her weight from dropping.
They don’t want to think about what happens if the last of their money runs out, or if the Pakistani police come knocking on the door.
Since October, when Pakistan’s government announced it was no longer tolerating the presence of undocumented Afghans, nearly 400,000 have returned to Afghanistan, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
In October, the UN’s OCHR urged Pakistan to halt the removals, warning that those who returned were at “grave risk of human rights violations.”
The most vulnerable included “civil society activists, journalists, human rights defenders, former government officials and security force members, and of course women and girls as a whole,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told journalists in Geneva.
Pakistan has defended its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan (IFRP), saying in a statement that it’s “compliant with applicable international norms and principles.”
Ahamad wants a safe place to go with his sisters, where they can rebuild their lives, resume their studies, and start to work as they’d always planned to do.
He knows that returning to Afghanistan is not an option for his sisters, especially Arzo, who cries with despair at the suggestion.
“If she returns to Afghanistan, she will face the same fate. It would be better to live in a peaceful country and continue her education and proper treatment,” Ahamad said.
For now, they live within the four walls of a room heavy with grief for the girl who used to dance barefoot but now struggles to find the strength to lift her head.
“I don’t cry in front of her, but I kiss her and cry while she sleeps at night, for her future, for her treatment, so she can survive this sickness,” said Ahamad.
Oppressed by the Taliban, she swallowed acid. Now her siblings are trying to save her life
The meeting is the first between Mawlawi Abdul Kabir and a foreign official within the past three months.
The Prime Minister’s office said in a press release that the Political Deputy Prime Minister Mawlawi Abdul Kabir met with Robert Chatterton Dickson, chargé d’affaires ad interim of the UK Mission to Afghanistan, and discussed many issues.
In the meeting, the Political Deputy Prime Minister emphasized the need to give the seat of Afghanistan to the representative of the Islamic Emirate in the United Nations and asked countries to send their representatives to Afghanistan.
“The Islamic Emirate has committed to having good relations with all countries but with conditions that the countries do not interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and let the Afghans continue improving and developing amid stability,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Islamic Emirate’s spokesman.
The meeting is the first between Mawlawi Abdul Kabir and a foreign official within the past three months as the deputy PM was absent from the office due to health issues.
“The deputy Prime Minister asked the Britain chargé d’affaires to give the Afghanistan seat at the UN to the Islamic Emirate. I think this a useless wish. The Islamic Emirate should bring reforms inside the country,” said Wahid Faqiri, international relations analyst.
“The meeting between the Deputy Prime Minister and chargé d’affaires is effective for the improvement of the situation in Afghanistan,” said Ahmad Khan Andar, political analyst.
Returning to his office, Mawlawi Abdul Kabir on Wednesday met with many members of the cabinet, where he discussed the Afghan refugees deported by Pakistan.
Geng Shuang, Chinese envoy at the UNSC, stressed the need to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a hub for terrorist organizations.
The UN Security Council said in a statement it has extended for another year the mandate of the team monitoring sanctions on the “Taliban and associated individuals and entities, which threaten Afghanistan’s peace, security and stability.”
The 15-member body, the statement said, “unanimously adopted resolution 2716 (2023) (to be issued as document S/RES/2716(2023)), directing the Monitoring Team to support the Committee established by resolution 1988 (2011), designating sanctions on individuals, groups, undertakings and entities found to be part of and linked to the Taliban.”
“Further to the text, the Monitoring Team is to gather information on instances of non-compliance with measures that include the freezing of funds and assets, prevention of travel and supply or transfer of arms and related equipment, established by resolution 2255 (2015),” UNSC said. “It is also to facilitate, upon request of Member States, assistance with capacity-building, and provide recommendations to the Committee for actions to respond to non-compliance.”
The new mandate will expire in December 2024.
According to the statement, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, whose delegation was the penholder on Afghanistan sanctions issues, welcomed the mandate’s renewal, saying the voting result is a “confirmation of the continuing importance of the 1988 sanctions regime” in supporting peace and security in Afghanistan.
The Team’s reporting remains crucial to understanding both the impact of the sanctions and the events on the ground in Afghanistan, she said, adding that “these insights enable Member States to track whether the Taliban follows through on its commitments,” including on counter-terrorism, human rights for women and girls and unhindered humanitarian access.
Geng Shuang, Chinese envoy at the UNSC, stressed the need to ensure that Afghanistan does not become a hub for terrorist organizations.
The international community must integrate the country into “the family of nations,” he said, expressing appreciation for the provision encouraging the Monitoring Team to visit Afghanistan and communicate with all Afghan parties.
He also urged the council to make timely adjustments to sanctions measures to avoid any negative impact on the Afghan people.
The team’s reports are a useful support for the Committee, said Anna M. Evstigneeva, envoy of the Russian Federation.
She said they are pleased that the text of the adopted resolution notes the importance of the travel of the team to Afghanistan, which remains a key condition for the mandate’s implementation.
But the Islamic Emirate condemned the decision, saying that the imposition of sanctions does not benefit any side.
“It is better that the countries and organizations understand that the imposition of sanctions is not the solution. The failed experiences will not be beneficial,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Islamic Emirate’s spokesman.
The Islamic Emirate’s leaders within the past two years have repeatedly voiced criticism over sanctions imposed on them by the international community.
UNSC Renews Mandate of Team Monitoring Sanctions on Islamic Emirate
There are no more state-sponsored women’s shelters in Afghanistan
The Taliban government in Afghanistan is putting women abuse survivors in prison and claiming it is for their protection, according to a UN report.
The UN said the practice harms the survivors’ mental and physical health.
There are also no more state-sponsored women’s shelters as the Taliban government sees no need for such centres, the report noted.
The Taliban’s suppression of women’s rights in Afghanistan is one of the harshest in the world.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) said that gender-based violence against Afghan women and girls was known to be high even before the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
But since then, such incidents have become even more common, given the impact of economic, financial and humanitarian crises which have afflicted the country, UNAMA said. Women have also been increasingly confined to their homes, which heightens their vulnerability to domestic and intimate partner violence.
Before the Taliban retook power in 2021, there were 23 state-sponsored women’s protection centres or shelters in Afghanistan, according to UNAMA, but these have since vanished.
Taliban officials told UNAMA there was no need for the shelters as the women must be with their husbands or male family members. One said such shelters were “a western concept”.
The officials said they would ask for male members of the family to make a “commitment” to not harm the woman survivor.
In instances where she had no male relatives to stay with, or where there were safety concerns, the survivor would be sent to prison “for her protection”. This would be similar to how some drug addicts and homeless people are housed in the capital Kabul, noted UNAMA.
But UNAMA said this “would amount to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty”.
“Confining women who are already in a situation of vulnerability in a punitive environment would also likely have a negative impact on their mental and physical health, re-victimisation and put them at risk of discrimination and stigmatisation upon released.”
UNAMA also noted that for a one-year period from 15 August 2021, the Taliban administration’s handling of gender-based violence complaints was “unclear and inconsistent”.
For example, there is no clear distinction between criminal and civil complaints, which does not ensure effective legal protection for women and girls.
The complaints are mostly handled by male personnel, and UNAMA noted that the absence of women personnel “discourages and inhibits survivors from lodging complaints”.
Survivors are now no longer guaranteed redress for their complaints, including civil remedies and compensation. They are reportedly more afraid of the Taliban government and their arbitrary actions and thus choose not to seek formal justice, said UNAMA.
While there were efforts to advance women’s rights between 2001 and 2021 – including law and policy reforms – these have “all but disappeared”.
Since retaking power in 2021, the Taliban government have all but broken their earlier promises to give women the right to work and study.
Girls in Afghanistan are only allowed to attend primary school. Teenage girls and women have also been barred from entering school and university classrooms.
They are not allowed in parks, gyms and pools. Beauty salons have been shut, while women must dress in a way that only reveals their eyes. They must be accompanied by a male relative if they are travelling more than 72km (45 miles).
Afghanistan: Taliban sends abused women to prison – UN
Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, said that the problem of Afghanistan and Pakistan should be solved jointly.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the caretaker government of Pakistan asked the Islamic Emirate to hand over the perpetrators of the recent attack in Dera Ismail Khan in that country.
Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the spokesperson of Pakistan’s foreign ministry, also said they wanted the prevention of “terrorist actions from Afghanistan’s soil against Pakistan.”
Meanwhile, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the former foreign minister of Pakistan, also said that after the Islamic Emirate again took over Afghanistan, the prisoners who were released from the Afghan prisons included people who were involved in terrorist activities in Pakistan.
Zardari added: “After the political changes in Afghanistan, the prisoners who were released from Afghanistan’s prisons included those people who were involved in terrorist activities in Pakistan And the government of Pakistan did not prevent their release.”
But the Islamic Emirate once again pledged that the territory of Afghanistan will not be used against any country, including Pakistan.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesman of the Islamic Emirate, said that the problem of Afghanistan and Pakistan should be solved jointly.
Mujahid said: “Afghanistan also has the same policy of not harming any country from its territory after the Islamic Emirate came to power. If someone was imprisoned here and they fled to Pakistan, the Islamic Emirate is not to blame, and this problem must have a proper solution.”
At the same time, a number of experts emphasized the need to solve the challenges.
“Pakistan wants to manage their economic situation with military bases,” said Salim Paigir, a military analyst.
This comes as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan in a statement on Thursday demanded an investigation into the recent attack, to arrest its perpetrators, to condemn it at the highest level, and not to use Afghanistan’s soil against Pakistan, as well as to hand over members of the Pakistani Taliban.
Pakistan Wants Handover of Attackers Allegedly in Afghanistan
More than 450,000 Afghans have left the country since Pakistani authorities launched a deportation drive in October.
Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistani government has announced that undocumented Afghans awaiting paperwork to resettle to a third country will be allowed to stay in Pakistan for two more months.
The extension of the deadline on Wednesday from the end of this year to February 29 comes amid Pakistan’s drive to expel more than one million foreigners living in the country without paperwork.
According to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 450,000 people have returned to neighbouring Afghanistan since the deportation campaign began in early October. Ninety percent of them did so “voluntarily”, according to the Pakistani government, but the UNHCR says they cited fear of arrest as the primary reason for their decision to leave.
Announcing the extension, interim information minister Murtaza Solangi said anybody overstaying the new deadline would be fined $100 monthly, with a cap set at $800.
“These measures were aimed at encouraging the Afghans residing illegally in Pakistan to obtain legal documents or finalise evacuation agreements as soon as possible in a third country,” Solangi added.
The announcement followed a visit to Pakistan by US State Department officials to discuss the issue of Afghan refugees. It is estimated that nearly 25,000 Afghans require paperwork for resettlement in the United States.
Pakistan estimates that more than 1.7 million Afghan nationals have long lived in the country without documents, with the majority arriving in different waves since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
The last such major influx of an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people took place two years ago after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities have cited a dramatic surge in violence this year – there have been more than 600 attacks in the first 11 months of 2023 – for the deportation drive.
Interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti said in October that 14 out of 24 suicide attacks in the country over that period were carried out by Afghan nationals. He did not provide any evidence.
The Taliban has denied any accusations of providing shelter to fighters, maintaining their position that Afghanistan’s soil is not being used for cross-border violence.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Pakistan extends deadline for Afghans awaiting third-country resettlement