The UN rights chief has voiced grave concern at the situation in Afghanistan under the Taliban, urging them to honour commitments to respect the rights of women and girls.
“A fundamental red line will be the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls, and respect for their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, education, self expression and employment, guided by international human rights norms,” Michelle Bachelet told a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, about 16,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, according to the Pentagon, as US troops lead an increasingly desperate effort to airlift thousands more before the Taliban’s “red line” for Western forces to leave the country.
US President Joe Biden is under increasing pressure to extend an August 31 deadline to pull out American forces, with Britain expected to lobby for that at a virtual G7 summit on Tuesday.
“More than a thousand Afghans, some hundred French nationals have been taken from Kabul to Abu Dhabi and from Abu Dhabi to Paris,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told Franceinfo radio.
“Among those 1,000 Afghans, one was supposedly – and I do say supposedly – linked with the Taliban. But he helped a lot, the French army, French citizens, journalists … We put him and his friends under surveillance on their arrival in France to clear up any doubt,” he said.
“One of those five persons left the place we asked them to stay in, he was taken into custody yesterday, which shows the security services are closely monitoring those individuals”, he added.
