UN rights chief calls for repeal of Afghan law turning women into ‘shadows’

GENEVA: The United Nations human rights chief on Tuesday called for Afghanistan’s Taliban to immediately repeal a set of “egregious” laws that it said were attempting to turn women into shadows.

High Commissioner Volker Turk said the passing of new laws last week “cements policies that completely erase women’s presence in public, silencing their voices and depriving them of their individual autonomy, effectively attempting to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows.”

“This is utterly intolerable,” he said, addressing journalists via a spokesperson at a UN press briefing.

Earlier, the European Union also condemned the Taliban’s new law, calling on the group to end the “systematic violations” of the rights of Afghan women and girls. The EU stated that the decree undermines the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and is unacceptable to the international community.

The law adopted last week imposes a lengthy list of repressive provisions on women, including mandates that they wear clothing covering their entire bodies, bans on their voices being heard in public, and further restrictions on their movement without a male relative, it was pointed out.

Even the sound of a female voice outside the home is apparently deemed a moral violation.

The law also requires men to grow beards, bans drivers from playing music, and restricts the media from publishing images of people. State agents are granted broad powers to detain individuals and impose punishments.