‘It’s regressive. It’s wrong’ – UK’s UN envoy on IEA hijab

Following a United Nations Security Council meeting on Thursday about an order by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) for women to cover their faces in public, the representative of the United Kingdom spoke out in strident terms against the order.

The decree marks a return to a signature policy of the IEA’s past hardline rule and an escalation of restrictions.

“It’s regressive. It’s wrong,” UK’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Barbara Woodward, said. “I think it underlines the Taliban’s (IEA) inability to lead Afghanistan out of its current economic and social and humanitarian crisis.”

U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, briefed the 15-member council, said Norway’s U.N. mission, which requested the closed-door meeting “to address the increased restrictions on human rights and freedoms of girls and women.”

Under the IEA’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001, women had to cover up, could not work, and girls were banned from school. But after seizing power in August, they vowed to respect women’s rights.

However in March, the IEA backtracked on their announcement that high schools would open for girls, saying they would remain closed until a plan was drawn up in accordance with Islamic law for them to reopen.

Then on Saturday the group’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, said that if a woman did not cover her face outside home, her father or closest male relative would be visited and face potential prison or firing from state jobs.

Most women in Afghanistan wear a headscarf for religious reasons but many in urban areas such as Kabul do not cover their faces.

“It’s hard to see that the international community and importantly the Afghan people will ever respect the Taliban (IEA) as legitimate authorities if this is the future for Afghanistan,” Woodward said.