On the anniversary of the militant Islamist Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Thursday condemned the group’s offences against women in Afghanistan as the “most massive systematic human rights violations worldwide.”
“Three years ago today, people in Afghanistan, especially women and girls, were uprooted from their lives,” Baerbock said in a statement released by the Foreign Office.
Since then, the Taliban have been destroying the hopes of millions of Afghan women and girls for a better life every day, she said, three years after the militants seized power.
“Half of the country is no longer allowed to do what is part of normal life: work, go to hospital or restaurants alone, sing, show their faces on the street, go to school as teenagers, be a woman,” she said.
The lives of women and girls in Afghanistan are like living under “house arrest.” Under the current conditions, it is not possible for Afghanistan to return to the international community, Baerbock said.
On August, 15, 2021, the Taliban took power in Afghanistan after Western troops withdrew from the country. Since then, they have drastically restricted the rights of women and girls, including banning women from all universities.
The United Nations says Afghanistan is also the only country in the world that denies women and girls over the age of 12 access to education.
