UN Security Council denounces Taliban’s law targeting Afghan women

A majority of the UN Security Council on Friday called for the repeal of Afghanistan's new laws curtailing women's rights, saying they "undermine" efforts to reintegrate the country with the international community.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the Taliban's continued systemic gender discrimination and oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan," a statement by 12 of the council's 15 member states said.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan, which took power in 2021 but is yet to be recognized by any other country, published a widely criticized law in August further tightening restrictions on women's lives, including on their ability to move around in public.

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.

Unrelated men and women are forbidden from looking at each other, and the law says women should only leave home for an "urgent need."

The joint statement was read by the Japanese UN ambassador, with the support of Ecuador, France, Guyana, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Russia, China and Algeria were not part of the statement.

"We would like to stress that the Taliban's actions of this kind only undermine the international community's efforts to engage with them," the statement said.

The new law deepens "the already unacceptable restrictions on the enjoyment by all Afghans of human rights and fundamental freedoms."

"The Taliban need to listen and respond to the voices of Afghan women and girls," it continued, adding that doing so "is a prerequisite for a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan."