SW News: A rights watchdog headquartered in New York claimed that Taliban authorities in Afghanistan are persecuting women and girls in violation of international law. The United Nations said the extremist Islamic organization has deliberately robbed women and girls of their basic rights based purely on their gender since seizing control of the war-torn nation in August 2021.

Elizabeth Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the Taliban's cruel and methodical denial of the basic rights of women and girls to remove them from public life has received global attention. She said that to bring the responsible Taliban leaders to justice, there must be coordinated support from concerned governments.

The watchdog said that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as a number of illegal acts carried out with knowledge of the attack and as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.

The rights organization said the purposeful and serious denial of fundamental rights in violation of international law constitutes persecution. "Persecution committed against people because of sex characteristics, or the social constructs and criteria used to define gender, amounts to gender persecution," the statement continued.

The report from the watchdog said the persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan since 2021 has been carried out through a number of published or written decrees, which constitutes a crime against humanity. These regulations have severely restricted people's freedoms of movement, expression, and association; prohibited almost all forms of work; prohibited secondary and higher education; and allowed arbitrary detentions and searches.

The group has urged Taliban leaders to eliminate all forms of discrimination and repression that deprive women and girls of their basic rights. “Afghanistan is a signatory to the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute. The ICC prosecutor's investigation into the Afghan situation was initially authorized by the court in 2020, and on October 31, 2022, the court authorized the prosecutor to resume that probe,” the group said.

Evenson said the ICC's inquiry into gender discrimination in Afghanistan might offer a way to hold those responsible accountable. She said governments should make sure the court has the resources and necessary cooperation so that its prosecutor can look into this crime along with other serious rights abuses.