Kabul [Afghanistan], September 1 : Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, reaffirmed the United Nations' commitment to ongoing engagement with all stakeholders in Afghanistan, including the Taliban-led interim government, TOLO News reported.
The remarks by Dujarric came while he attended a press conference on Saturday. The spokesman for the UN Secretary-General also called on the interim government of Afghanistan to open up more avenues for diplomatic engagement.
During the press conference, Dujarric told reporters, "In terms of the contacts with the de facto authorities, I mean, we will continue to engage with all stakeholders in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. And we've always done so following our mandate and I would say impartially and in good faith, always upholding the norms of the UN, pushing the messages of human rights and equality," according to TOLO News.
The spokesman further said, "And we will continue our work as mandated by the Security Council. And I think we would urge the de facto authorities to, in fact, open more avenues for diplomatic engagement."
Notably, the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan had expressed deep concern on August 25 regarding the new morality law imposed by Afghanistan's de facto authorities, which imposes restrictions on personal conduct, and said that the law is a distressing vision for Afghanistan's future.
Taliban authorities had announced the ratification of a Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, with 35 articles detailing restrictions on the Afghan population with arbitrary and severe enforcement mechanisms.
In a statement, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) had said, "UNAMA is concerned by the promulgation by Afghanistan's de facto authorities of a morality law which imposes wide-ranging and far-reaching restrictions on personal conduct and provides morality police with broad powers of enforcement."
"It is a distressing vision for Afghanistan's future, where moral inspectors have discretionary powers to threaten and detain anyone based on broad and sometimes vague lists of infractions," said Roza Otunbayeva, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of UNAMA.
Otunbayeva emphasized that the law imposes intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls. "It extends the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation," she said.
"After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one," Otunbayeva had added.
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