Rights Violations under Taliban Rule
RASC News Agency: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will on Monday, October 6, deliberate on a draft resolution seeking to establish an independent investigative mechanism tasked with documenting, preserving, and pursuing accountability for grave human rights violations in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s repressive regime.
According to a detailed report by Agence France-Presse (AFP), Denmark, representing the European Union, has formally introduced the draft before the Council. Should it pass, the resolution will pave the way for the creation of a special international body mandated to collect, verify, and analyze evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other severe breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law committed in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.
The proposed mechanism aims to end the entrenched culture of impunity that has long protected perpetrators of atrocities in Afghanistan. Its objectives include ensuring accountability for those responsible, preventing the destruction of evidence, and laying a legal foundation for future prosecutions before international courts or ad hoc tribunals.
A spokesperson for the European Union told AFP that the mechanism is “the outcome of months of inclusive and meticulous consultation, designed to bring an end to decades of unchecked impunity and silence surrounding atrocities in Afghanistan.”
A substantial section of the draft resolution centers on the systematic subjugation of women and girls, which has become the defining hallmark of Taliban governance. The text explicitly condemns the Taliban’s institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, and exclusion, describing it as an “apparatus of gender-based domination and erasure.” It further denounces the Taliban’s ban on women working for the United Nations and non-governmental organizations as a “flagrant violation of fundamental human rights and international conventions.”
The resolution calls on the Taliban to immediately and unconditionally revoke all restrictions on women’s access to education, employment, and freedom of movement. It also demands the restoration of women’s participation in public and political life a sphere from which the Taliban have ruthlessly erased them through edicts that many international jurists now describe as a form of state-enforced gender apartheid.
Since their violent takeover in 2021, the Taliban have imposed a network of decrees that have systematically dismantled women’s rights, shut down educational institutions for girls, banned women from most professions, and criminalized female independence. These measures have plunged millions into despair and exposed Afghanistan to what UN experts describe as “a silent humanitarian catastrophe driven by ideological extremism.”
The Taliban’s gender persecution and suppression of civil freedoms have left the regime isolated on the world stage, with most governments refusing to grant formal recognition. Yet, despite their escalating repression, the Taliban continue to manipulate international aid and humanitarian negotiations to project a façade of governance while perpetuating one of the most severe human rights crises of the 21st century.
“The adoption of this resolution would represent a pivotal step toward dismantling impunity for crimes committed in Afghanistan,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It sends a clear and powerful message to the Taliban and their accomplices that the world is watching and that evidence for accountability is already being preserved.”
So far, fourteen member states of the Human Rights Council have endorsed the resolution. If adopted, the UN Secretary-General will be mandated to design and operationalize the investigative body within months and present a detailed progress report to the Council.
This proposed mechanism represents far more than a bureaucratic exercise. It embodies a moral refusal by the international community to normalize the Taliban’s brutality or to let Afghanistan’s suffering recede into diplomatic indifference. Two decades of progress in women’s education, human rights, and media freedom have been systematically obliterated under Taliban rule, yet the global conscience has too often responded with muted concern.
In truth, this resolution is both a warning and a plea a warning to the Taliban that their crimes will not vanish into silence, and a plea to the international community to finally align its humanitarian rhetoric with decisive accountability. As Afghanistan bleeds under tyranny, the promise of justice, however distant, remains the only hope that the nation’s oppressed millions can still cling to.
