Taliban's treatment of women could be 'gender apartheid' - UN expert

FILE PHOTO: An Afghan woman and a girl walk in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Ali Khara/File Photo

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations expert said on Monday that the Taliban's treatment of Afghan women and girls could amount to gender apartheid as their rights continue to be gravely infringed by the country's de facto authorities.

"Grave, systematic and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid," U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.