U.N. says three Afghan female staff momentarily held by Taliban

• UNAMA urged the Taliban to stop intimidating its female local employees.
• Taliban spokesmen vehemently denied the accusations.
• The Taliban rejected the accusations of harassment.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported On Monday,  that three of its female Afghan employees had been briefly detained by Taliban security personnel. UNAMA urged the Taliban to stop intimidating its female local employees.

Taliban spokesmen vehemently denied the accusations.

In a statement, UNAMA claimed that the three women who work for the U.N. had been singled out by armed security guards on Monday and briefly detained for questioning, but she gave no additional information about the incident.

“The UN calls for an immediate end to all such acts of intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff, calling on the de facto authorities to reiterate and enforce explicit guarantees for the safety and security of all U.N. personnel operating in Afghanistan,” the U.N. mission (UNAMA) said in a statement.

“There has been an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan U.N. female staff by the de facto authorities,” UNAMA said, referring to the Taliban administration.

According to Taliban deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi, the incident involved Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice officials in the southern city of Kandahar. The Taliban rejected the accusations of harassment.

“They wanted to know about a gathering of women, but then they realised that the gathering was related to U.N. female workers, they left them alone,” he said.

No foreign nation has recognised the Taliban’s rule since they took over the nation a little more than a year ago, and stringent sanctions have economically isolated Afghanistan.

Due to this, many nations no longer have embassies in Kabul, and as a result, the international community has scaled back its development assistance, leaving the UN and other NGOs to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in urgently needed humanitarian aid.

The group has tightened restrictions on women’s participation in public life, closing girls’ high schools in the majority of provinces, advising women to cover their faces in public, and advising them not to travel great distances alone.

Despite some women still working outside the home, statistics from international organizations show a decline in women’s participation in the workforce.

Also Read

Afghanistan heading “into authoritarianism” claims UN human rights expert

Afghan women urged the UN to establish an investigation mechanism for abuses....