Organization: Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada
Item 2: Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan
Date: 28 February 2025
Speaker:Rahima Toufan
Oral Statement to the 58th Session of the UN Human Rights Council from Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada (LRWC), and the International Bar Association, NGOs in special consultative status
Afghanistan: Urgent Call for Accountability for Human Rights Violations
Mr. President,
Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute welcome the ICC Prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants for Taliban leaders for the crime of gender persecution.
We condemn the Taliban’s increasing repression of women and girls’ rights, since 2021, including killings.
Women and girls are denied the right to education and work. Repressive measures, such as the confinement of women in their homes and requirements for building homes without windows, are examples of the Taliban’s oppression of women, amounting to gender apartheid.
Women are prohibited from speaking with other women or reading the Quran aloud, creating a climate of fear and isolation and stripping away all their rights and freedoms, including religious expression.
Prosecutors, lawyers, and judges had to flee to third countries and are at serious risk of deportation.
This Council has failed to respond adequately to the gravity of the situation. We call on this Council to take overdue action and establish an independent gender-responsive accountability mechanism without further delay, mandated to investigate, collect, and preserve evidence, and identify perpetrators of past and ongoing international crimes, including the crime against humanity of gender persecution.
Thank you.
