Rights Group Urges Taliban To Free 'Disappeared' Aid Workers

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to release several international aid workers who were "forcibly disappeared" from their offices last month and are still missing without word on their location or condition.

HRW said in a statement that the Taliban, which seized power five years ago, has provided no information on the whereabouts of the leadership team of the nongovernmental group Women and Children Legal Research Foundation (WCLRF), who were arrested in Kabul on July 18.

Taliban security forces on June 21 raided the office of the NGO, which delivers assistance programs and conducts research and advocacy on women's and children’s rights, and confiscated laptops and phones from staff members.

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They later sealed the office and launched an investigation against the staff members.

HRW said that on July 18 Taliban officials ordered six male staff members to return to the office to collect their confiscated devices. Instead, all six were taken into custody.

“The Taliban seems to consider any effort to assist women and girls a threat to their abusive rule,” HRW’s Women's Rights Director Macarena Saez said in a statement.

“They should immediately provide information on the six staff members’ whereabouts and release them if held unlawfully.”

Two UN Staffers Detained

Separately, the United Nations confirmed the detention of two of its staffers earlier this week, saying it has not been informed of any charges, nor has it been granted access to the two detained aid workers. The UN's political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, is involved in human rights monitoring and data gathering.

While seizing Kabul on August 15, 2021, the Taliban pledged, among other things, that "women will be very active in society," though a clause adding "within the framework of Islam" brought some skepticism regarding how strictly or restrictively that framework would be interpreted.

Since then, the Taliban have sharply curbed women's rights, including banning them from most jobs and public appearances. Some 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan are barred from attending secondary school, according to the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO.

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Afghanistan is the only country in the world to ban females from attending secondary schools and universities, leading to what the UN has called “gender apartheid.”

Quoting Zarqa Yaftali, director of the WCLRF, said the families of the staff members who disappeared are “living in constant fear and uncertainty.”

The Taliban has also tightened the noose around independent media and journalists’ rights organizations since seizing Kabul five years ago.

Nai Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan (Nai SOMA), a journalists’ rights body, says the Taliban have converted Afghanistan into an open prison for media and freedom of expression.

In its report encompassing the five-year Taliban rule, the organization says at least six journalists have been killed in incidents of violence relating to members of the Islamic State militant group and the Taliban.

Sidiqullah Tawhidi, a senior Nai SOMA official, told RFERL’s Azadi Radio that 700 incidents of violence against journalists were registered in the past five years.

The Taliban has also revoked the licenses of several media outlets in Kabul and other provinces over the past five years accusing them of “unprofessional” journalism.