G7 condemns Taliban actions against women's rights in Afghanistan

The Group of Seven industrialized nations on Thursday condemned the Taliban's increasing restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan, accusing the extremist Islamist group of isolating Afghanistan.

"We call on the Taliban to immediately take the necessary steps to lift restrictions on women and girls," the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States said in a statement.

The statement added: "We condemn the increasing imposition of restrictive measures that severely impede the full, equal, and meaningful participation of half of the country's population in society."

The foreign ministers of eight industrialized countries have emphasized that the Taliban are "further isolating their country in the international community" by violating the rights of women and girls.

The Taliban, who took over Afghanistan last summer, promised to implement more lenient laws than they did when they were in power from 1996 to 2001. But they have since increasingly restricted the rights of Afghans, especially women and girls, who have been barred from returning to high school and many government jobs.

Women across the country are banned from traveling without male family members, and last week Taliban officials ordered them to cover their faces in public, especially with the burqa.

On Thursday, representatives of a number of countries at the United Nations also condemned the increasing restrictions on women in Afghanistan.

"Instead of focusing on solving the economic crisis in Afghanistan, the Taliban's policies are focused on suppressing women and girls," said Trine Heimerbeck, Norway's deputy ambassador to the United Nations.

Barbara Woodward, the British ambassador to the United Nations, also said that the Taliban's demand to remove women from the public sphere was "oppressive" and "wrong."

The United Nations Security Council has held a closed-door meeting on this issue, and it is likely that the council will issue a statement condemning the Taliban's actions against women in the coming days.

Source: Radio Farda