RASC News Agency: Gordon Brown, the United Nations Special Representative in the Department of Global Education, says that the International Criminal Court (ICC) should recognize the gender discrimination that the Taliban group has practiced in Afghanistan as a crime against humanity, and those responsible for this should be recognized.
In a press conference on the second anniversary of the Taliban’s resumption of Afghanistan, Brown said that he had written a letter to Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and expressed his opinion about the Taliban.
Referring to the actions of the Taliban group in the last two years, this senior United Nations official said: “This [action of the Taliban group] against women and girls is the worst example of human rights violations that occurs in the world.”
He also said that if the treatment of the Taliban group against women and girls continues in the same way and they are exempted from punishment, others will try to do the same.
Brown said that after the Taliban regained control of the country, they once again denied girls over the age of 12 from continuing to school.
He also echoed the statements of other United Nations officials and said that the Taliban group not only prevented women from working in government offices, non-governmental organizations, and United Nations offices, but also from going to schools, universities, recreation centers, traveling without Muharram and even they have also forbidden going to the bathroom.
On December 24, 2022, the Taliban group banned women from continuing to work in domestic and foreign non-governmental organizations. After this order, most major international non-governmental organizations suspended their activities in Afghanistan, and this order of the Taliban group faced many reactions from the international community and human rights defenders.
“The International Criminal Court should recognize this kind of gender discrimination as crimes against humanity and prosecute its perpetrators,” Brown said.
But Karim Khan’s office, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has not yet responded to this request.
Brown also said that in his opinion, there is a difference of opinion among the Taliban group, because he believes that some officials of the Taliban group in Kabul are in favor of girls returning to school, but “the leaders of this group in Kandahar are against the return of girls to school.”
Brown also asked Muslim-majority countries to send their delegations to Kandahar to convince the leaders of the Taliban group to cancel the ban on girls going to school and women’s employment, which has no basis in “Qur’an and Islam”.
