Key international actors, including the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, have used terms such as “gender apartheid” to describe the high levels of discrimination.
“Gender apartheid is not just a theoretical possibility or a legal concept, it is a real threat to millions of women and girls around the world,” it said in February.
Afghanistan currently has no traditional legal framework, but a series of written and verbal decrees issued by de facto authorities coercively restrict the freedom of women and girls.
The UN Women's agency has called for immediate global action to end this injustice.
Increasing Repression
The Taliban's decrees, based on their interpretation of Islamic law, dictate women's dress, severely restrict their movement, limit their access to education and career opportunities, and effectively remove women's voices from the public sphere.
Only 1% of Afghan women feel they have influence in their community, and 18% report that they have not met with any women outside their immediate family in the past three months.
“Women want decision-making power, not just at home but in government and beyond. We want an education. We want to work. We want rights,” a 26-year-old Afghan woman told UN Women.
This discrimination will have inevitable long-term consequences: banning girls from education, for example, is correlated with a 25 percent increase in child marriage and a 45 percent increase in early birth rates.
According to the UN Women's Gender Profile, the fact that 1.1 million girls are out of school and over 100,000 women are out of university correlates with at least a 50 percent increased risk of maternal mortality.
Human rights violations against civilians remain widespread in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
Human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remain widespread in the country's war-torn east.
These are the disturbing findings of a new report released on Monday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which says children are being killed, abducted, sexually abused and exploited by armed groups in North Kivu province.
During May, the agency recorded 164 alerts involving children, about 90 percent of which occurred in conflict zones, including Goma-Nyiragongo.
Clashes intensify
UNHCR noted that escalating clashes in Masisi and Rutshuru, and attacks on civilians in Beni, have forced more than 250,000 people to flee their homes and shelters.
Displaced people who have returned to their homes are the most common victims of human rights violations, with Masisi, Beni and Rutshuulu areas being the most severely affected.
The UN agency said the increase in abuses since April was likely due to fighting between M23 militants and rival Allied Democratic Forces forces in southeast Masisi and northern Rutshuru.
Since May 27, the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) has conducted more than 50 patrols to secure routes from Quilambo, Mirangi, Kanyabayonga, Kania and Kirumba to the camps for displaced persons, as well as to protect civilians.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a news conference at U.N. headquarters on Monday that the mission had recently stepped up its activities in the region following the large-scale displacement of people.
As part of its mandate to support disarmament, demobilization and reintegration efforts, MONUSCO assisted the return of six former combatants, including one woman, to different parts of North Kivu province.
Climate change plans fall short on forest protection, UNEP warns
Despite global commitments to end deforestation by 2030, only eight of the top 20 fastest deforesting countries have quantifiable targets linked to their National Climate Action Plans (NDCs), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned on Monday.
This is according to a UN REDD report on accelerating climate action to protect forests around the world, which are a key part of efforts to sequester carbon and slow global warming.
The report finds significant gaps in the protection, management and restoration of forests in the current NDCs, which set out plans for adapting to and mitigating climate change.
insufficient
UNEP said pledges submitted between 2017 and 2023 fall short of global targets to halt and reverse deforestation.
Forests could contribute up to one-third of the emissions reductions needed to close the 2030 mitigation gap.
Although 11 of the NDCs include targets for replanting and reforestation, reducing deforestation is the first step in mitigating the effects of climate change, as it will take many years to recapture the carbon that is lost.
UNEP says it is key to incorporate existing national strategies to curb emissions from deforestation into NDCs, which 15 of the 20 countries surveyed have adopted.
