UN reports numerous killings, rights abuses under Afghanistan’s Taliban
- UN report says the Taliban have carried out hundreds of human rights violations since seizing power last year
- A spokesman for the Taliban government rejected the UN report’s findings, calling them ‘baseless and propaganda’
Hundreds of people have been killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban overran the country nearly a year ago, even though security on the whole has improved since then, the United Nations said in a report.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan also highlighted the poor situation of women and girls since the Taliban takeover and how they have been stripped of many of their human rights under Afghanistan’s current rulers.
“It is beyond time for all Afghans to be able to live in peace and rebuild their lives after 20 years of armed conflict. Our monitoring reveals that despite the improved security situation since 15 August, the people of Afghanistan, in particular women and girls, are deprived of the full enjoyment of their human rights,” said Markus Potzel, deputy special representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan.
The report, released on Wednesday, said as many as 700 people have been killed and 1,400 wounded since mid-August 2021, when the Taliban overran the Afghan capital of Kabul as the United States and Nato were in the final weeks of their withdrawal from the country.
The majority of those casualties were linked to attacks by Islamic State’s affiliate in the country, a bitter rival of the Taliban which has targeted ethnic and religious minority communities in places where they go to school, worship and go about their daily lives.
Afghanistan has seen persistent bombings and other attacks on civilians, often targeting the mainly Shiite Muslim ethnic Hazara minority. Most of the attacks have been claimed by Isis’ affiliate in the country.
