Media Coverage

The Taliban has not been invited to a United Nations-organized conference on Afghanistan in Doha, with the Afghan group governing the South Asian country saying that the two-day meeting would be “ineffective” without its participation. Envoys from the United States, China, and Russia, as well as...

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has unanimously condemned a ban by the Taliban on Afghan women working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, calling on Taliban leaders to “swiftly reverse” a crackdown on the rights of women and girls. The resolution—drafted by the United Arab Emirates and Japan...

Afghan religious scholars Saturday criticized a ban on female education, as a key Taliban minister warned clerics not to rebel against the government on the controversial issue. Girls cannot go to school beyond sixth grade in Afghanistan, with the education ban extending to universities. Women are...

UN officials have condemned a Taliban decision to bar Afghan female staffers from working at the agency. Afghan women are already barred from working at national and international non-governmental organizations, disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid, but the ban did not previously cover...

A women-run radio station in Afghanistan’s northeast has been shut down for playing music during the holy month of Ramadan, a Taliban official said Saturday. Sadai Banowan, which means women’s voice in Dari, is Afghanistan’s only women-run station and started 10 years ago. Moezuddin Ahmadi, the...

Calls mounted Wednesday for the Taliban to free a girls’ education activist arrested earlier this week in Kabul, as a minister in the Taliban-led government defended the detention. Matiullah Wesa, founder and president of Pen Path—a local nongovernmental group that travels across Afghanistan with a...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Emirati authorities on Wednesday of arbitrarily detaining for more than 15 months as many as 2,700 Afghan evacuees who have not qualified for resettlement elsewhere. Many of the Afghans in Emirates Humanitarian City are suffering from depression and other...

The Taliban's treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan could amount to a crime against humanity, according to a UN report presented on Monday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. "The Taliban's intentional and calculated policy is to repudiate the human rights of women and girls and to erase...

The 11 female foreign ministers attending the Munich Security Council have issued a joint statement condemning the efforts of Afghanistan's Taliban to "exclude women from all public life." "Women are kept from strolling in parks, are not seen on TV screens anymore, are deprived from their right to...

The United Nations aid chief has said the humanitarian community was speaking with Taliban officials to try and gain further exemptions and written guidelines to allow some female aid workers to operate in Afghanistan despite a ban on women NGO staff. It was the second UN-led delegation that came to...