The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
The UN’s human rights chief has called for the Taliban to immediately repeal “egregious” new laws which force women to conceal their voices, faces and bodies in public. The “vice and virtue” laws introduced in Afghanistan last week also ban women from singing or reading aloud (even inside their homes) and from looking directly at men they are not related to. Yesterday, the UN’s Volker Turk said the new laws effectively render women in Afghanistan “faceless, voiceless shadows”. But former Afghan parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai has criticised the UN for trying to “normalise” relations with the Taliban and “whitewashing” the group. Last week, the UN-appointed special rapporteur for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, was barred from entering the country by the Taliban following accusations he had produced UN reports documenting human rights abuses “based on prejudices and anecdotes”.
