Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the US Department of State, Vedant Patel, said that “the Taliban’s policies towards women and girls are an affront to human rights” and the group’s relations with the international community will suffer as long as these policies continued.
“The Taliban’s policies towards women and girls are an affront to human rights, and as long as the Taliban repress women and girls, the Taliban’s relations with the international community are going to suffer,” he said at a press briefing on Thursday, 19 January. “We’ve been quite clear, the Secretary’s been quite clear, to earn legitimacy and credibility, actions are going to need to speak loudly and they will need to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms to all Afghans, not just occasionally.”
On dealing with the humanitarian situation in the country, he said, the US has provided “more than 1.1 billion in U.S. humanitarian assistance” for Afghanistan since the Taliban recaptured the country in August 2021.
Despite intense lobbying from the UN, country officials and international organisations, the Taliban has not relented on its decisions to ban women from universities and aid worker. The group banned girls from secondary schools soon after recapturing power in August 2021.
