Legitimizing the Taliban’s Patriarchal World View: Daily Brief

Why are governments, UN agencies, and aid organizations sending only men to meet with Afghanistan’s new rulers? After all, the Taliban don’t refuse to meet women, and women meet with the Taliban all the time. By continuing to have only men in negotiating teams, diplomats, donors, and aid agencies are legitimizing the Taliban’s patriarchal view of the world. If they really care about the rights of Afghan women, the first step is to have women on negotiating teams — front and center. 

A year ago young people across Nigeria took to the streets calling for disbanding an abusive police unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in a movement tagged #EndSARS. Security forces responded with brutal force, including firing live ammunition into the crowd, which resulted in death and serious injuries. One year on, the victims are still awaiting justice. 

It’s been a year since a Constitutional Tribunal ruling virtually banned legal abortion in Poland. The ruling is causing incalculable harm to women and girls – especially those who are poor, live in rural areas, or are marginalized. Poland’s government should reverse these restrictions and ensure that reproductive rights are upheld in accordance with international law, 14 human rights organizations said today, ahead of the first anniversary of the ruling. And as the European Parliament debates Poland’s crisis, members should urgently address rule of law breaches and their impact on women’s human rights in the country.  

The Cuban government responded to overwhelmingly peaceful anti-government protests in July with a brutal strategy of repression. Peaceful protesters and other critics have been systematically detained, held incommunicado and abused in horrendous conditions, and subjected to sham trials following patterns that indicate these human rights violations are not the actions of rogue agents, a new Human Rights Watch report finds.  

Some good news from Australia where change is afoot for children born with variations in their sex characteristics. In as new report the Australian Human Rights Commission calls on the government to develop rights-based standards of care for children born perfectly healthy, just a little different, and to legally regulate surgeries, limiting them to when the patient has consented or where they are “required urgently to avoid serious harm”. 

And lastly, join Human Rights Watch’s Film Festival team for the streaming of The Lesson, and an important discussion about the rise of Anti-Semitism across Europe and beyond.