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HRC 63 - Human Rights in Afghanistan Continuity - 07 September 2026
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Statements , Conferences | HRC , OHCHR
HRC 63 - Human Rights in Afghanistan - 07 September 2026
- Richard Bennett, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan
- Nasir Ahmad Andisha, Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the UN in Geneva (country concerned)
Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, at the 63rd regular session of the Human Rights Council
Opening statements:
- Richard Bennett, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan
- Nasir Ahmad Andisha, Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the UN in Geneva (country concerned)
Teleprompter
Mr Vice President, distinguished delegates, colleagues and friends, I begin by recommitting to defending the human rights of the people of Afghanistan, especially its women and girls, and by asking this Council to do the same, not only in words but also in deeds.
We meet three weeks after the 5th anniversary of the Taliban's seizure of power.
After five years, the cumulative effect is clear.
The Taliban's unrelenting restrictions, policies and practises not only violate the human rights of Afghans, but are reshaping the social fabric of the country.
The education system excludes girls and indoctrinates boys.
The media trumpets Taliban doctrine.
Music, art, poetry and other forms of culture are suppressed.
The institutions that once offered protection have been dismantled, and now Taliban decrees reach into the most private areas of life.
The Taliban are constantly testing the limits of what the international community will tolerate.
After five years, they've learned that condemnation cost them little and that red lines can be crossed without consequences.
Every time we protest in words but continue to act as before, we send send the same message.
This is acceptable.
The Taliban's gender order is the centre of it all.
After four years in this mandate, I remain shocked by what Afghans share with me about physical and psychological abuse by Taliban officials, sometimes compounded by abuse from their own families.
I'm also shocked by the increasingly dehumanising statements of leading Taliban, including denying women's equal humanity.
My report is in two parts.
1st, I review human rights development since November 25, with an annex taking stop of the of the past five years.
Second, I review the situation of children in Afghanistan.
UN figures show that 46% of Afghans are under fifteen, 2/3 are under 25.
Whatever happens to Afghanistan's children today will shape the country for decades to come.
As with my previous reports, my findings come from Afghans themselves.
Focus group discussions with 102 participants from every region and 25 written submissions, including from children and young people.
The words of one young one girl have stayed with me.
She said 3 words have come to defined our lives.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Those are not simply the words of one girl.
They reflect what I've been hearing from children and young people across Afghanistan about a childhood shaped by fear, deprivation and loss of hope.
I continue to hear reports of suicide by girls.
The de facto authorities also continue to reject the internationally recognised definition of a child as anyone under 18, dismantling legal frameworks and institutions that used to protect children.
At the same time, new directors and decrees are further eroding their rights.
Their May 26th decree on spousal separation appears to recognise marriage involving children and treats any girl who's attained puberty as eligible.
Under these rules, a girl's silence can be taken as her consent to marriage.
It's become almost impossible for a married girl or woman to leave an abusive relationship.
Meanwhile, the so-called rules for courts sanctions violence against women and girls with punishments only if they're broken bones or visible bruises.
Even then, the penalties are grossly inadequate.
While girls are excluded from secondary education, boys remain in school, but their education is increasingly shaped by Taliban ideology.
My report finds that child labour is increasing despite being prohibited children sold or given away by families who've nothing left.
Meanwhile, around 9 million Afghan children are facing severe hunger and 3.7 million under 5 are acutely malnourished.
My findings on children and youth include several intersecting identities and and vulnerabilities.
The harms to children can't be understood separately from gender, and the Taliban's institutionalised and systematic regime of gender based discrimination, oppression and domination, which I've previously described as gender apartheid, is at the core of the Taliban's ideology and rule and is shaping the whole of society, including for children, with deeply intergenerational consequences.
However, Afghans young people are not only victims.
Girls are learning in secret and teaching one another.
Young Afghans are documenting what's happening to them, organising and finding ways to participate in their country's future.
Behind this chamber, Afghan artists have an exhibition they cannot show at home.
It's called Art Resists Hope Blooms.
I encourage you to see it Now.
I'll briefly summarise some recent developments affecting the overall human rights situation.
I'm deeply concerned about rising pressure on minority religious and ethnic communities.
Afghans right to practise their religion is being steadily constrained.
A recent decree restricts recognition of preachers to followers of the Hanafi school, and the new family decree overrides Shia personal status law.
In Barakshan, Ishmaeli, places of worship continue to be closed during Assura.
This year, Shia commemorations were confined to designated locations, mobile networks were suspended, and dozens of men were detained for displaying Assura flags.
In April, 12 civilians were killed by unidentified gunmen near a shrine in Hirat.
Minority communities are also targeted on ethnic grounds through land appropriation and forced evictions, exclusion from public life, and other discriminatory practises.
Hazara communities appear to be singled out, along with Uzbek, Turkmen and Tajik communities.
I remain deeply concerned that persons who are or are perceived to be L GB TIQ plus remain extremely vulnerable to violence, discrimination and severe criminal punishment.
Disability is a legacy of years of war and people with disabilities are excluded from education, healthcare and assistance.
I find children with disabilities face compounded barriers.
Civic space has been steadily closed, organisations restricted, journalists detained, human rights defenders persecuted.
When residents of Iraq protest protested peacefully in June against the arrest of women over dress requirements, security forces opened fire, killing a boy and detaining detained dozens in the days that followed.
And last month the crackdown became law.
A new statute approved by the Taliban leader bans all demonstrations throughout Afghanistan and as I speak, six staff members of a humanitarian organisation have been held for almost two months without charge.
I call for their release and for the release of all civilians detained without trial.
Cross-border attacks this year have killed or injured well over 1000 civilians, many of them women and children, in their own homes.
An air strike on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul on 16th March, according to Yunama, killed 269 people and injured at least 122.
I have not seen the outcome of an investigation into this tragedy.
Millions of Afghans have come back from Iran and Pakistan, some deported, others under pressure.
Among them are registered refugees, unaccompanied children and people born in exile.
They arrived to find little work and a humanitarian response a fraction of what's needed.
Some returnees are punished for their past links with the former Republic, minorities or LGBTI identities, or lawful activity as defenders or journalists punished through arbitrary detention, torture and in some cases, death.
I appreciate that Pakistan and Iran have hosted millions of Afghans for decades and that Pakistan recently identified some 16,000 people who stay as being facilitated.
That instinct needs to become a system.
No removal without individual protection screening Afghanistan is not safe for involuntary return.
Deportations must halt, including from European countries which risk breaching the principle of non reform.
Mr Vice President, I call on Member States to refrain from normalising relations with the Taliban until they have reversed oppressive policies.
After five years, it may be tempting to think about a change in approach.
However, neither dialogue with the Taliban nor isolating them appears to make any difference.
There's no evidence that the Taliban intends to moderate its conduct.
The decrees of the past year point in the other direction.
There's a strong case for more humanitarian assistance and for well designed support that reaches Afghans directly.
But change must not mean compromising human rights law.
Abandoning Afghans would hand the Taliban legitimacy in exchange for little, and Afghan women would pay 1st.
And that standard applies to our own house.
As the secretary general has noted, today is precisely one year since the Taliban physically barred Afghan women from reporting to the UN workplaces.
We cannot keep asking states to refuse the erasure of women while accommodating it inside our own walls.
The old tools approach I espouse must advance gender competent, survivor centric, child centred and inclusive justice, whoever the perpetrator and whether whenever the crime was committed.
I call on Member States to urgently support and bolster every available accountability mechanism and I hail Afghan LED efforts such as last year's hearing on the women of Afghanistan by the Permanent People's Tribunal.
In conclusion, five years is a long time in the life of a girl, but it's a short time in a country ravaged by decades of war and impunity.
Victims and survivors of the entire period have a right to truth, justice and reparations.
Once again, I ask this Council to stand with the people of Afghanistan in deeds as well as words.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you, Mr Vice President, We thank the Special Rapporteur, Sir Richard Bennett, for his report and for the extensive work undertaking in upholding his mandate.
The report, informed by consultation, focus group discussions, submissions and interviews, provides an important account of the human rights situation in Afghanistan, including the impact of Taliban policies on children and young people.
Five years after the Taliban's military takeover, restrictions affecting fundamental rights are no longer isolated measures.
As the report demonstrates, they have increasingly been consolidated through decrease directives and practises, with particularly severe consequences for women and girls, children and young people, and ethnic and religious minorities.
This institutionalisation is precisely why the situation requires our urgent attention, and the finding concerning woman and girl illustrates this concern particularly clear.
The report assessment of the 2026° on the separation and criminal rules is not simply a matter of legislative shortcoming.
In fact, no legislative procedure exists under the Taliban.
It's only one month's when Mr Vice President, women facing violence encounter almost insurmountable barriers and where legal protection against violence are further weakened, the ability of women to speak protection, to seek protection itself is being undermined.
These measures are consequential because they affect the very mechanism through which rights can be exercised and violation challenge.
While this report lightly calls for the replacement of the decrees and asks for restoration of appropriate protection and independent legal services, as well As for the revocation of 2026 decrees of criminal rule calling on the Taliban, the five years showed has no practical impact on the children's right.
The dismantlement of children protection and juvenile justice mechanism, the absence of legal definition of child exposure to corporal punishment and the report of recruitment and the use of children points to the erosion of safeguard that should protect children from precisely these form of abuse and exploitation.
To continue, exclusion of girls and women from the education must also be viewed in this longer term context.
The consequence extend beyond the denial of fundamental rights today, the effect Afghanistan future human capacity and the ability of a generation to particularly fully to participate fully in the country's social and economic life.
The report's finding therefore reinforces the urgency of restoring access to education rather than allowing the loss of educational opportunities to become permanent, as emphasised by the High Commissioner Walker Turk this morning, and is a statement.
The report also makes clear that the resturrection of individual rights is accompanied by shrinking civic space, restriction on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
Arbitrary detention and the concern regarding the due process reduce the ability of Afghanistan society to raise concerns, seek redress and hold those responsible to account.
The reports violence against members of the Shia community and the event in Herod further underlines the importance of the effective investigation and accountability.
Mr Vice President, what remains is not for the deliberation on the fact, but the decision on what follows from them.
The reports before us provides a clear and sufficient basis for the Council to move beyond the the cycle and which violations are documented, condemned and repeated.
On the accountability, we call on the Council members to #1 ensure a full and urgent operationalization of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Afghanistan with the resources and mandate necessary to do its work without delay.
We are also urging rethinking about the placement of IIM Afghanistan permanently in Vienna.
Sustain and reinforce the investigation of the Criminal Court investigations.
Advance the codification of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity within the forthcoming Convention on Crime against Humanity.
Finally, support universal jurisdiction proceeding and Afghan LED transitional justice initiative so that the accountability is not confined to institutions in Geneva and The Hague, but rather reaches to those who commit these violations.
And we thank you, Madam, Mr Vice President.