UN: women in Afghanistan are alive but not living

Women in Afghanistan told the UN rights experts that they are alive but not living, according to UN’s statement that published on Friday.

This came amid a UN eight-day visit to Afghanistan following a systematic crackdown on the rights of Afghan women on the hands of the Taliban.

The UN rights experts said “we are alarmed about widespread mental health issues and accounts of escalating suicides among women and girls,” the statement added.

“This extreme situation of institutionalized gender-based discrimination in Afghanistan is unparalleled anywhere in the world,” they mentioned.

The experts further added that the gender- based discrimination in Afghanistan right now is “deeply engrained in society and even normalised.”

Females in Afghanistan are now prohibited from attending school above the sixth grade. In Afghanistan, women can only be provided care by female doctors, and are banned from working at the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the UN.

“Numerous women shared their feelings of fear and extreme anxiety, describing their situation as a life under house arrest” said special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, and the Chair of the working group on discrimination against women and girls, Dorothy Estrada-Tanck.

Taliban has been ruling for two years through “the most extreme forms of misogyny” which according to UN experts, destroys the relative achieved progress towards gender equality throughout the past two decades.