Colombo: – Seventy-three years have passed since the adoption by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which declared that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and that “everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.” As one of the UN’s earliest member-states since 1946,
Afghanistan strove to meet its UDHR obligations, continuously expanding the civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights of its citizens. From constitutional measures to institutionalize human rights to investment in the sustainable development of Afghanistan to realize them underpinned the commitment of former Afghan governments to the implementation of the UDHR, with the exception of Taliban rule in the 1990s.
Unfortunately, since August 15, 2021, when the Taliban illegally and forcefully took power, the people of Afghanistan have unprecedentedly lost their hard-won 20-year gains in equal human rights, which are enshrined in Afghanistan’s progressive Constitution based on Islam, the Afghan culture, and the country’s international obligations, including UDHR. An absolute majority of the Afghan people—including women, children, youth, and ethno-sectarian groups—have been deprived of such basic rights as human and protective security. For example, girls have been banned from education, while women have been barred from work. Ethnic Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Tajiks have been forcibly expelled from their areas of origin. These inhumane measures by Taliban constitute a gross violation of the key provisions of the UDHR, highlighted above.
Consequently, the catastrophic humanitarian crisis—which had been widening because of the extremely violent terrorist attacks and offensives by the Taliban and their state-sponsor Pakistan that systematically destroyed local state institutions and service-delivery infrastructure across the country—is now threatening the Afghan people with starvation in the midst of a harsh winter. Tragically, 14 million Afghans face severe hunger; 3.4 million children suffer from acute malnutrition; 22.8 million need immediate relief aid; and 97 percent of all Afghans live below the poverty line.
“While the Afghan people immensely appreciate the mounting humanitarian efforts by the UN agencies to provide life-saving aid across Afghanistan, they only see the restoration of the Afghan constitutional order as a durable solution to the undoing of their basic human rights by the Taliban and their state-sponsor Pakistan. A failure to reverse this human rights catastrophe could revisit the consequences of neglecting human rights conditions in Afghanistan in the 1990s,” commented Ambassador M. Ashraf Haidari.
That is why international efforts to be spearheaded by the UN must focus on the early formation of an inclusive government acceptable to all Afghans. Bound by its international obligations, including UDHR, such a broad-based government could help unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets, halt the ongoing brain-drain, and gradually work to address the medium- and long-term protective and human security needs of the Afghan people, consistent with the 2030 Global Goals.(Afghanistan embassy in Colombo)
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