UN says Taliban harassed its female staff in Afghanistan

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has made an accusation saying that the Taliban were harassing and intimidating its female staff in the country. The UN said that the regime detained three women for questioning on Monday (Spetember 12). Taliban have imposed strict restrictions on women since they came to power last year.

"There has been an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan UN female staff by the de facto authorities," the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.

Citing an example, UNAMA said three Afghan women working for the organisation were "singled out and temporarily detained for questioning" by armed security agents of the authorities on Monday.

Further details about the incident were not given.

"The UN calls for an immediate end to all such acts of intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff," UNAMA said, insisting the authorities provide guarantees for the security of all UN personnel in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have rejected UN's assertion.

"The information released by UNAMA is not true... nobody had been detained," said Bilal Karimi, spokeperson of the government.

"There was a gathering of women in Kandahar, and when the women were asked for an explanation, it was found that they were UN employees, after which they were released."

Karimi did not say what the gathering was about or how many women attended it.

United Nations' accusation was made just hours after a top UN expert said that the state of human rights in the country had deteriorated.

Women and girls, in particular, have seen a "staggering regression" in their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights since the Taliban came to power, Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, said in Geneva.

"There's no country in the world where women and girls have so rapidly been deprived of their fundamental human rights purely because of gender."

The Taliban have almost driven people out of public life in Afghanistan. Sticking to their ultra-orthodox interpretation of Islam, the regime has shut girls' secondary schools in most provinces. They have also barred women from many government jobs.

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