Sympathy Is Not Enough, Hold Taliban Accountable, Says Malala Yousafzai

The ministry announced that a film festival has been held in Kabul at a time when the law for the promotion of virtue of this group prohibits the publication of images of living beings.

The Taliban-controlled National Television reported that the Taliban's Afghan Film and Theater Directorate recently held the third festival of short films with jihadi themes in Kabul. According to the media outlet, the Taliban's Ministry of Information and Culture has handed out awards to some of the directors, writers, and cameramen participating in the festival.

At the closing ceremony of the festival, Atiqullah Azizi, the Taliban's deputy for culture and art, while announcing support for the production of jihadi films, said, "We call on all writers and filmmakers to make such films keeping in mind national and Islamic values."

This is while the Taliban's Law for the Promotion of Virtue criminalises the publication and distribution of images of humans and all animals.

The organisation said that following the restrictions imposed by this law, many Afghan women feel frustrated, depressed and angry.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Thursday, October 10, released a report on the occasion of World Mental Health Day, quoting a psychiatric counsellor, as stating that mental illness among Afghan women has increased by 40 to 50 percent in the past year.

Farzana, a mental health advisor for the UN refugee agency, said that factors including increasing restrictions on women and girls, high rates of domestic violence and an overall deterioration in the economic situation have contributed to the increase in mental illness among Afghan women.

The UN Refugee Agency notes that psychological distress affects more than half of Afghanistan's population. According to the organisation, one in five people in Afghanistan suffers from severe mental health problems.

The organisation also announced the provision of psychological counselling services to more than 35,000 Afghans this year, saying that the need for psychosocial services, especially for women, is still much higher than the available services.

The report of the United Nations Refugee Agency on the occasion of World Mental Health Day states that the forced deportation of Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan has also had an impact on the increase in stress and mental illness among Afghans.

Earlier, officials of the mental health department of Herat Regional Hospital reported a worrying increase in the number of women suffering from mental illnesses in May this year. According to health officials, at least 80 percent of the patients referred to the Herat Psychiatric Hospital are women and girls.

This comes as the Taliban have increasingly increased restrictions on Afghan women. The Taliban's law for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which was signed by the group's leader in recent months, considers women's voices to be "illegal" and prohibits their presence in society.

The Russian official said that dialogue with the Taliban is important because the group is in power in Afghanistan. The statement, published on Thursday (October 10), read that a delegation from the Council of the Russian Federation visited Tajikistan. It is not yet clear whether the delegation will discuss Afghanistan during its visit to Tajikistan.

Russia has close relations with the Taliban, but Tajikistan has repeatedly warned about the current situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban rule over the past three years.

Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Security Service of the Russian Federation, had previously said that the Taliban was cooperating with Russia in the fight against ISIS-K.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also announced in July 2023 that Moscow sees the Taliban as an ally in the fight against terrorism.

Despite repeated requests from human rights groups, the council did not establish a mechanism to hold the Taliban accountable for human rights violations, she said.

In an op-ed, Power wrote that the Human Rights Council missed the opportunity to ensure justice and address serious abuses in Afghanistan. She said that the resolution could pave the way for the establishment of a mechanism to hold the Taliban accountable.

"Despite repeated calls from human rights groups, this resolution does not create a mechanism to respond to the Taliban's severe abuses in Afghanistan, including the group's systematic oppression of Afghan women and girls," Power wrote.

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Wednesday adopted a resolution condemning the widespread violations of human rights, especially the rights of women and girls, in Afghanistan and emphasising on the need for accountability and protection for minorities and vulnerable groups.

The resolution also expressed concern about the deteriorating human rights situation in Afghanistan, in particular the continuing systematic violations of the rights of women and girls, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, forced displacement, ill-treatment of prisoners and collective punishment.

In a new resolution, the Human Rights Council extended the mandate of UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett and asked him to submit a report on the Taliban's "Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" in the next session.

Human Rights Watch's criticism of the Human Rights Council resolution comes as four Western countries, including Germany and Canada, have threatened to sue the Taliban at the International Court of Justice for widespread violations of women's rights.

They hope that the court will force the Taliban to abide by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is also investigating human rights violations in Afghanistan, which could lead to the arrest of Taliban officials accused of human rights abuses.

The organisation said that the policewomen of the former government are in hiding after they received threats from the Taliban.

The report, titled "Dual Betrayal: Past and Present Abuses of Afghan Policewomen," said that the former government's female officials were threatened by Taliban officials.

According to the report, the Taliban's threats have also increased the risks to these women from their families, who were opposed to their presence in the ranks of the police forces since the beginning.

Human Rights Watch said that the threats have also caused many former female police officers to live in hiding in Afghanistan for fear of being identified.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 24 women from the former government's police forces for this report. Ten of these women were interviewed in person, with nine people remotely in five provinces of Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch also heard the accounts of five women who are now in the United States, Sweden, Italy, Iran, and Pakistan.

According to the report, female police members of the former Afghan government receive threatening phone calls from the Taliban and are asked to go to the group's offices for interrogation.

The women have also received warnings of uncertain consequences for working with the former government's police forces.

Human Rights Watch has said that several female officials of the former government have been killed by relatives who believed that these women had “demeaned the reputation" of their families. According to the report, the Taliban did not conduct a credible investigation into the deaths of these women.

The interviewees also said that the Taliban violently raided their homes for searches, attacked the men of the family, and destroyed the property.

Human Rights Watch said in its report that female police officers were also subjected to "sexual harassment and rape" by their male colleagues during their tenure in the previous government.

The report added that the previous government officials were never held accountable for their actions towards female police officers.

According to the report, a number of female police officers of the former government said that they were repeatedly subjected to "sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual violence" during their work.

They also said that they were pressured by superiors to "have sex in exchange for promotion or to avoid being fired".

Human Rights Watch said that since at least 2013, cases of abuse of female police officers under the previous government have been known among countries that support these forces.

In its report, Human Rights Watch wrote that many female members of the former government have fled to neighbouring countries such as Iran or Pakistan or are trying to obtain asylum in some other countries.

The women said that they were suffering from the long-term psychological effects of abuse they had experienced in the past but had not been able to receive adequate psychological support.

The report said that the female police officials of the former Afghan government were "betrayed" in two ways: first, by the previous Afghan government, which allowed serious sexual abuses against them to continue unaddressed, and second, by countries that ignored these abuses and also denied asylum or resettlement to female police officers.

Countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan, as well as the European Union, which supported the training and employment of these women, must now prioritise their asylum and resettlement applications, Human Rights Watch said.

Meanwhile, sources told Afghanistan International that Western countries have rejected the asylum applications of many female police officials of the former government because they are "military". These women are currently living in a state of uncertainty in third countries such as Pakistan.

Human Rights Watch also called on the Taliban to stop harassing female police officers of the former Afghan government and launch credible investigations into the matter.

The former government's female police officials lost their jobs after the Taliban takeover and are now facing economic challenges to find alternative income, the organisation said.

According to the report, the Taliban government has called a small number of these women to work to inspect women at the group's checkpoints as well as guard female prisoners.

"The governments that funded the training and employment of women in the Afghan police force should also put pressure on the Taliban to end all abuses against women and girls," said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.