UN rights chief voices ‘abhorrence’ of Afghanistan ‘vice’ law

GENEVA: The UN rights chief on Monday slammed Afghanistan´s latest laws curtailing women´s rights, decrying the “outrageous” and “unparallelled” repression of half the country´s population.

Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Volker Turk made clear his “abhorrence of these latest measures”. The Taliban government in Afghanistan -- which took power in 2021 but is yet to be recognised by any other country -- published a widely-criticised law in August further tightening restrictions on women´s lives.

While many of the measures have been informally enforced since the Taliban´s takeover in 2021, their formal codification sparked an outcry from the international community and rights groups.

The new “vice and virtue” law dictates that a woman´s voice should not be raised outside the home, and that women should not sing or read poetry aloud. It requires them to cover their entire body and face if they need to leave their homes, which they should only do “out of necessity”. He emphasised that “women who have sought to protest such laws or express any different opinion or form of dissent have faced harsh punishments”.