270,000 Afghans Deported Through Dogharoun Border In First Half Of This Year

She called on governments, especially Muslim countries, to go beyond verbal sympathy to hold the Taliban accountable.

Twelve years ago, on October 9, the Pakistani Taliban severely wounded Malala Yousafzai, who was campaigning for girls' right to education in Pakistan's tribal areas.

On Thursday, Yousafzai recalled the incident in a post on her social media platform X and criticised the Taliban's policies towards Afghan women, which, like their counterparts in Pakistan, have deprived Afghan women and girls of education.

The Afghan Taliban "have been aiming their guns at Afghan girls and women, both realistically and virtually", Malala said. "They experience everything from being beaten in public to cruel orders banning learning, working and living freely."

"The Taliban's systematic brutality and oppression of women is so severe that Afghan activists and human rights defenders call it gender apartheid," she added.

Malala stressed that Afghan women and girls need more than sympathy right now.

She called on influential governments and institutions to use their power and hold the Taliban accountable through international law. In particular, she called on Muslim leaders and Islamic organisations to challenge the Taliban's policies.

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.