Comment by UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Liz Throssell on Afghanistan

In the latest step taken to disempower women in Afghanistan, the de facto authorities have told women civil servants barred from going to work that their salaries would now be cut to the lowest level regardless of their experience or qualifications.

Following their takeover in August 2021, the Taliban said that women could return to work when “the necessary conditions” were in place. Almost three years on, they have failed to clarify any timeline towards that resumption, or take any meaningful steps towards allowing all women civil servants to return to work.

This latest discriminatory and profoundly arbitrary decision further deepens the erosion of human rights in Afghanistan, following decisions to restrict women and girls’ access to education and employment, limit their freedom of movement, and curtail their presence in public spaces, effectively entrenching the exclusion of women from public life.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, calls on the de facto authorities to rescind all laws, instructions, edicts and other measures that discriminate against women and girls, in clear violation of Afghanistan’s human rights obligations.