When it comes to the horrifying realities facing the people of Afghanistan, women are being “erased”, according to prominent journalist and Afghan women’s rights activist, Mahbouba Seraj.
On Monday, the eminent 74-year old addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, saying human rights in Afghanistan do not exist, adding, “Women of that country… are erased.”
“I’m begging all of you, please if this council has something to do, do it, otherwise, please don’t talk about it. Because talking has been … cheap,” she said.
Seraj added that she was “sick and tired” of alerting the world to the atrocities women are facing in her country, only to see no action from other countries.
“You’ve got to do something. God only knows what kind of atrocities are not being reported,” she said.
Seraj is one of many activists who are lobbying the council to create an independent group of experts to monitor the abuses occurring in Afghanistan, with the aim to eventually prosecute the perpetrators.
Since its takeover in August last year, the Taliban have imposed severe restrictions on women, including barring girls from school, requiring women to wear burqas in public and banning women from travelling without a male chaperone.
Fellow Afghan, Razia Sayad addressed the council soon after Seraj, saying “the women of Afghanistan are now left to the mercy of a group that is inherently anti-women and does not recognise women as human beings.”
Sayad, a lawyer and former commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, believes the current tragedy is a by-product of the systems that were developed over the past two decades.
“The people of Afghanistan have been denied their legal, social and economic identities,” he said.
The special rapporteur on the rights crisis in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, presented his inaugural report to the council, warning them that “Afghans are trapped in a human rights crisis that the world has seemed powerless to address.”
The report describes “staggering regression in women and girls’ enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights” noting that “in no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life.”
Bennet highlighted the disproportionate horrors faced by the Hazara community, such as being “arbitrarily arrested, tortured, summarily executed, displaced from traditional lands, subjected to discriminatory taxation and otherwise marginalised.”
The former international advisor to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission concluded his address by encouraging the international community to “acknowledge its own role and responsibility for the situation unfolding in Afghanistan today.”
“Recognise the Afghan survivors and victims and listen to them about what they consider is necessary to rebuild their country and support their efforts politically and financially,” he implored.