KABUL – United Nations experts, including Richard Bennett, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, have called on the international community to reject the Taliban’s “violent and authoritarian” rule and resist any moves to normalise their regime, four years after the group seized power.
“For four years the people of Afghanistan, especially women and girls, have endured a relentless and escalating assault on their fundamental rights and freedoms,” the experts said in a joint statement.
They added that the Taliban are running an illegitimate government that enforces an “institutionalised system of gender oppression,” silences dissent, punishes critics, and erases independent media, while showing “outright contempt” for human rights.
The statement condemned the Taliban’s continued imposition of harsh edicts banning girls from secondary and higher education, restricting women’s movement, employment, health care, freedom of expression, and participation in public life.
The experts said the severity of these measures amounts to the crime against humanity of gender persecution, welcoming the recent International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Taliban supreme leader and the group’s chief justice.
They also documented a wide range of other human rights violations, including public executions, corporal punishments, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture in detention, repression of human rights defenders, targeting of ethnic and religious minorities, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and abuses under the pretext of national security.
Warning against the perception that Taliban rule is inevitable, the experts urged an “all-tools” approach combining diplomatic pressure, international accountability, the codification of gender apartheid as a crime, and greater support for Afghan civil society, especially women-led organisations.
They also called for stronger protection of Afghan refugees and internally displaced persons, criticising Iran and Pakistan for deporting large numbers of Afghans back to potential persecution.
“The people of Afghanistan, especially women and girls, must be central to all efforts for change,” the experts said. “They cannot do it alone. Principled, focused, and sustained international solidarity is essential. Every day without action strengthens the Taliban’s grip.”
