The United Nations Human Rights Council should urgently create an independent body to pursue accountability for all those responsible for serious abuses - past and present - in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today.
Since the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the country's human rights and humanitarian situations have gravely spiraled downward. The Taliban's repressive policies have disproportionately targeted women and girls, making Afghanistan the world's most serious women's rights crisis.
"The Taliban have systematically violated fundamental rights in Afghanistan with impunity," said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The UN Human Rights Council should create a dedicated mechanism to collect and preserve evidence of abuses and support accountability efforts, as has been done in many other situations."
Afghanistan is now the only country where girls are banned from receiving education beyond the sixth grade and women are barred from attending university. Taliban authorities have also barred women from many forms of employment, restricted their freedom of movement, and imposed severe limitations on their public lives, including playing sports, visiting parks, and singing in public.
The Taliban have also severely restricted freedom of expression and media. Journalists have been subjected to threats, arbitrary detention, and torture, creating a climate of fear that deters independent reporting. Taliban authorities have threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily detained lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.
Afghanistan's humanitarian situation remains dire, with 23 million people facing hunger as the country grapples with an economic crisis and worsening poverty.
In 2021, the UN Human Rights Council appointed a special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, a vital mandate that should be renewed because of the continued deterioration of the situation.
A coalition of 90 Afghan and international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, renewed their appeal calling for accountability in Afghanistan, including for the Human Rights Council to establish an additional, and complementary, dedicated independent mechanism to investigate past and ongoing abuses and address decades of impunity for grave abuses. This mechanism should be empowered to investigate, preserve evidence, and identify perpetrators of abuses, including the Taliban's widespread and ongoing human rights violations against women and girls.
"The UN Human Rights Council should create an independent accountability mechanism to uphold the rights of Afghans to justice and reparations for the abuses they have suffered for decades without redress," Abbasi said.
