The darkening rule of the Taliban regime over Afghanistan continues to dim prospects for women’s rights as well as any chances for the war-torn country to overcome an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe. Currently more than 50 percent of the population — some 23 million people — require humanitarian assistance and that aid is now decreasing.

Against the glaring images of Afghanistan’s misrule, massive ongoing gender discrimination and corrupt government, the U.N. Security Council again challenged Taliban authorities to reverse human rights offenses, which dramatically grew after President Joe Biden’s shameful and shambolic military withdrawal in 2021.

"Afghans increasingly resent the intrusions on their private lives by the de facto authorities. They fear Afghanistan’s further isolation from the rest of the world," the U.N.’s special representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, said in a gripping Security Council briefing.

"After three and a half years under Taliban rule, they have indeed welcomed an absence of conflict, and greater stability and freedom of movement, at least for the male population," she stressed. "But this is not a peace in which they can live in dignity with their human rights respected and with confidence in a stable future."

Otunbayeva conceded, “On........

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