Webinar: Human Rights Under Taliban Occupied Afghanistan
More than one year since the takeover of power by the Taliban and the fall of the Republic of Afghanistan, the human rights situation in the country has been dire. Under a heavy atmosphere of surveillance and censorship, systematic violations of human rights across the country have been reported by authoritative human rights bodies and civil society actors. The general amnesty announced by the Taliban never held, and hundreds of former military personnel have been subject to torture, unlawful detainment, and extra judicial killings. Systematic targeted killings of Hazaras, in what some practitioners have argued to amount to genocide, have continued and there has been serious rights violations against Uzbek and Tajik communities, including the collective punishment of Panjshiris and war crimes against the national resistance forces, comprised of the members of the former Republic in Panjshir and its adjacent areas. This is in addition to the Taliban’s enforced gender apartheid in the country.
Since their usurpation of power, the Taliban remains unrecognized internationally. They have disbanded the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and there are no existing legal frameworks in the country. The newly appointed Office of the Special Rapporteur, Richard Bennett, has worked under the surveillance of the Taliban authorities in the last few months.
The speakers in this panel are distinguished scholars and practitioners with extensive experience in their respective fields who can shed light on the current situation of human rights in Afghanistan, the place of international laws in holding the Taliban accountable, and the responsibility of human rights bodies in prevention, investigation, and accountability.
Speakers:
Nasir Andisha, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the UN in Geneva.
Farkhondeh Akbari, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Gender, Peace and Security Centre, Monash University.
Gregory Gordon, Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
Shamshad Pasarlay, Visiting Lecturer of Law, University of Chicago Law School.
Moderator:
Munazza Ebtikar, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies & Anthropology, University of Oxford.