Amnesty International: Responding to the double public executions by the Taliban yesterday, Livia Saccardi, Amnesty International’s interim Deputy Regional Director for South Asia, said: “We oppose all executions as a violation of the right to life. The Taliban has been repeatedly carrying them out publicly which is a gross affront to human dignity as well as a violation of international laws and standards and cannot be tolerated.      Full news...

Independent News: The Taliban in Afghanistan have announced plans to restrict or completely block access to Facebook, a move condemned by rights activists. The Taliban’s acting minister of telecommunications and information technology Najibullah Haqqani confirmed the plans in an interview with Kabul-based TOLO News last week.Reeling from two decades of siege and war, millions of people in Afghanistan have limited access to cellular services and internet connection in a widening information blackout.      Full news...

AP News: The Taliban held a public execution on Monday of a man convicted of murder in northern Afghanistan as thousands watched at a sports stadium, the third such death sentence to be carried out in the past five days. The execution took place in heavy snowfall in the city of Shibirghan, the capital of northern Jawzjan province, where the brother of the murdered man shot the convict five times with a rifle, according to a witness. Security around the stadium was tight, said the witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.      Full news...

The Guardian: The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said. Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.“With this announcement by the Taliban leader, a new chapter of private punishments has begun and Afghan women are experiencing the depths of loneliness,” Arefi said.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: Al Qaeda is back to its old tricks in Afghanistan. Much as it did before masterminding the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist group is running militant training camps; sharing the profits of the Taliban’s illicit drug, mining, and smuggling enterprises; and funneling the proceeds to affiliated jihadi groups worldwide. An unpublished report circulating among Western diplomats and U.N. officials details how deeply embedded the group once run by Osama bin Laden is in the Taliban’s operations, as they loot Afghanistan’s natural wealth and steal international aid meant to alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans.      Full news...

THE Nation: Pakistan’s Special Representa­tive on Afghanistan Ambassador Asif Durrani has said that Paki­stan’s peace talks with the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) failed in the past because the mili­tant group was neither ready to sur­render nor swear allegiance to the constitution of Pakistan. The third primary reason for the deadlock in talks was that the group didn’t want to face the law for the heinous crimes it committed, including the attack on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar, he added.      Full news...

UN NEWS: Police enforcement has increased harassment in public spaces and further limited women’s ability to leave their homes, according to testimony from 745 Afghan women participating in the latest survey by UN Women, International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).The insights follow recent reports of the arbitrary and severe enforcement of the hijab decree, particularly in Kabul, the agencies said – which began publishing quarterly consultations with diverse Afghan women a year after the Taliban took power in August 2021.      Full news...

Rukhshana News: Eight people have been flogged and sentenced to prison on charges of “abuse and dishonor” in western Herat province, a Taliban court said Thursday.The Taliban Supreme Court newsletter said the eight people were punished with 20 lashes each and sentenced to five months imprisonment. The decision by Herat’s military court was endorsed by the Taliban Supreme Court, it added. Following its takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban has resumed its rule by severe corporal punishment and swift executions, sometimes as a public spectacle.      Full news...

The Independent: The Taliban on Thursday executed two men convicted of stabbing by gunfire in Afghanistan’s southeastern Ghazni province. Thousands of people watched the public execution in broad daylight after the Taliban-led Supreme Court convicted the two men for a murder by stabbing. The court identified the two men as Syed Jamal from central Wardak province and Gul Khan from Ghazni but did not clarify who carried out the stabbings.      Full news...

Afghan Women News: Local sources in Balkh province report the shooting of a young woman by unidentified armed individuals in the province. According to the sources, the body of a woman who had been shot was discovered in the village of Kol Ambu in the Balkh district of Balkh province on the morning of Monday, February 5. According to an informed source, this woman was shot by unidentified armed individuals around 4 a.m. Her identity and the motive behind her murder are not yet clear.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: In the last two and a half years after regaining power in Afghanistan, the Taliban, have created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis. They have systematically violated the rights of women and girls including as they relate to education, paid employment, freedom of speech and movement, and political participation among many others. The response of the international community has been tepid and seems to lack an appreciation of how the situation in Afghanistan has grave implications for the rights of women and girls globally. More needs to be done to prevent this from developing any further and to reinforce global commitment to gender equality.      Full news...

Dawn News: ALMOST two years after they seized control of Kabul, the Afghan Taliban are still engrossed in suffocating Afghan women. Education for girls in secondary school and women in university was banned a while ago. Then a ban was imposed on women working in NGOs, adding to the restrictions on women working for the government. This plethora of curbs eliminating and erasing women from the public sphere was not enough for the Taliban. Recently, women working in beauty parlours came to work to find out that the faces of women on signs advertising their parlours had been erased.      Full news...

Khaama Press: According to the report published on Tuesday, January 30th, al-Qaeda has managed to maintain a “holding” position under the rule of the Taliban, leading to tensions between the Taliban and some al-Qaeda leaders due to the Taliban’s efforts to restrict the group’s activities in Afghanistan.The United Nations Security Council had previously expressed concerns about the presence of terrorist groups and their activities in Afghanistan. The latest report from the council indicates that al-Qaeda lacks the operational capacity to organize large-scale attacks with its remaining members.      Full news...

Khaama Press News:The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported on Friday, January 19th, citing the United Nations Office (UNAMA) that this cash is held in a dedicated account at a private bank and is not transferred to the Central Bank under the Taliban control. However, critics argue that the Taliban still influence how this money is spent. In June 2023, a reliable source at the Central Bank of Afghanistan under Taliban control confirmed that $40 million packages of humanitarian aid are being sent to Kabul, but the Taliban no longer publicizes this news through the media.      Full news...

Al Jazeera: After five years of medical training, Lima, 28, should be one year into her residency as a doctor, perfecting her diagnostic skills. Instead, she takes temperatures and administers injections, tasks she has been doing at an emergency room in Kabul for three months now. While this is not the work she expected to be doing at this point in her career, she’s happy to at least be doing this.“Being at the hospital means I can stay close to my field.It helps me to stay connected to it,” Lima told Al Jazeera over the course of several telephone calls. She is identified by her first name only for safety reasons.      Full news...

Arab News: KHOST, Afghanistan: Zubaida traveled from the rural outskirts of Khost in eastern Afghanistan to give birth at a maternity hospital specializing in complicated cases, fearing a fate all too common among pregnant Afghan women — her death or her child’s.She lay dazed, surrounded by the unfamiliar bustle of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF)-run hospital, exhausted from delivery the day before, but relieved.Her still-weak newborn slept nearby in an iron crib with peeling paint, the child’s eyes lined with khol to ward off evil.      Full news...

Save the children: Almost 8 million children in Afghanistan – or one in three - will enter the new year facing crisis levels of hunger as increasingly freezing conditions threaten communities already reeling from drought, earthquakes, and economic hardship, said Save the Children. New figures[i] released today by the IPC, the global hunger monitoring system, predict an increase in the number of people experiencing crisis or emergency levels of hunger in Afghanistan during the winter months, although the situation has improved compared with the same period last year.      Full news...

Afghanistan Women News: Local sources in Takhar province report the detention of Nabila Rahimi, a human rights activist and trainer of health programs of a contractor organization with United Nations development programs, by the Taliban. According to the sources, Nabila Rahimi was arrested from her work place on Wednesday, November 22 after being beaten by Taliban forces. One of Nabila’s relatives confirmed her arrest on Saturday, November 25, 2023, and said that Nabila was arrested by Taliban forces due to continuing her activities from the area of ​​Oil Selling Road, Taloqan city, Takhar province.      Full news...

Afghanistan Women News: After gaining power in Afghanistan, the Taliban group systematically, violently and cruelly treats women. This extremist group forcefully imposes that women must be kept in their homes and are not allowed to leave the house and be in the community. The Taliban group is specifically targeting and harassing women’s rights activists who have fought against the group in various fields in the past. Taliban forces persecute them by keeping in prisons, enduring tortures and beatings.      Full news...

Afghanistan Wmen News: Hosna Sadat, the former presenter of Khurshid private TV, ended her life by jumping from the fourth floor of a building in Qala-e-Fathullah area of ​​the 10th district of Kabul. A number of Hosna Sadat’s friends called the reason for her suicide to escape from the hands of the Taliban and said that last night the Taliban had invaded her house, she had to jump from the fourth floor of her residential building to save herself and eventuated to committing suicide.The news of Hasna’s suicide has become public today, Friday, December 1.      Full news...

Khama Press: Sources from Herat confirm that the Taliban administration has prohibited women’s tailoring in the central region of this province. Simultaneously, some media outlets have reported establishing a specialized women’s market in Balkh. The source, who preferred not to be named in the report, informed Khama Press that Taliban forces entered the city Wednesday morning to inspect commercial markets. Several markets, including all women’s clothing tailoring centres, have been closed as part of this inspection.      Full news...

Hasht-E Subh: Local sources in Baghlan province report that the Taliban targeted an unarmed civilian in Andarab, unleashing a barrage of gunfire. The incident occurred on Monday, November 20, in the Qasan Dara area of Andarab.The young man subjected to the gunfire was named Mir Aqa. Following his arrest, the Taliban reportedly executed him by firing squad. Sources indicate that Mir Aqa had no affiliations with any military factions. As of now, the Taliban in Baghlan have not issued any statements regarding this incident.      Full news...

BNN News: Taliban fighters in Herat province, Afghanistan, launched a crackdown on girls’ education, forcibly shutting down several educational centers. The closures were enforced by physically blocking entrances and sealing gates, striking a blow to female education in a country where it has already been severely curtailed. In Ghazni province, schools were previously closed due to reasons such as male teachers shaving their beards and female teachers not adhering to the hijab dress code. For over two years, the Taliban has enforced a ban on girls attending universities and schools beyond the sixth grade.      Full news...

Gallup News: Prospects remain grim for women and girls inside Afghanistan in 2023, as well as the hundreds of thousands of undocumented refugee women and girls whom Pakistan is currently forcing to return to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. As they have since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, Gallup surveys continue to show that nearly all Afghan women are suffering and most do not feel women in their country are treated with respect. But this year, women’s satisfaction with the freedom they have to choose what they do with their lives has dropped to an unprecedented low. Just 11% of Afghan women interviewed in July said they are satisfied with the freedom they have to choose what they do with their lives, which is a new record low, not just for Afghanistan but for any country or population that Gallup has ever polled.      Full news...

VOA: Taliban officials in Afghanistan said Tuesday that a bomb blast ripped through a minibus in Kabul, killing at least seven civilians and wounding 20 others. A police spokesman confirmed the casualties, saying the evening deadly bombing occurred in the western Dashti Barchi area, a predominantly Shi’ite Muslim neighborhood in the Afghan capital. The spokesman, Khalid Zadran, said an investigation into the attack was underway. The United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan denounced the bombing, saying it was the third attack in less than a month against members of the ethnic Hazara Shiite community.      Full news...

Play the Game: For more than two years, the Taliban regime in Kabul has been in full violation of the Olympic Charter thanks to its religious war on women’s sport in Afghanistan. But the Islamic rulers of the Asian country have not yet been sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for their discrimination against female athletes.“That the Taliban allow a single female flag bearer at a major tournament, while simultaneously crushing the rights and hopes of millions of Afghan women athletes is more likely a cruel strategy by the Taliban to cover up systematic rights abuses than any mark of meaningful progress,” Worden says to Play the Game.      Full news...

Hasht-e-Subh: The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, under the Taliban’s rule in Ghazni province, has issued a directive prohibiting the treatment of male and female patients in the same building within the province’s hospitals, according to sources.Officials from the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue in Ghazni province have warned healthcare facility authorities that violations will result in penalties.      Full news...

Hasht-e Subh: According to the findings of Hasht-e Subh Daily, the Taliban have arrested at least 59 residents of Panjshir province in the past two weeks, both from the province itself and Kabul.These arrests took place in various provinces provinces starting from October 16th of this year. The findings reveal that the Taliban detained 30 individuals from Pajwai, 15 from Dara-e-Abdullahkhel, two from Takhaw village, and two others from Abshar district in Panjshir province.      Full news...

Bayan News: Officials of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Balkh province have blocked more than 10 women’s tailoring shops today, Monday (October 30), due to non-compliance with the orders of the Islamic Emirate.Sources say that these women’s tailoring shops were located in the bustling Zalal Trade Market in Mazar-i-Sharif city, and it had been instructed that these shops be relocated to the Khadija Kubra Market, which is dedicated to women.      Full news...

Sky News: The Taliban regime forced women to choose between abiding by the law or surviving - and so many died in fear. Weeks on from one of the most destructive earthquakes in Afghanistan's history, thousands of people in Herat are living in tents next to what remains of their homes.The 6.3-magnitude quake hit on 11 October, destroying entire villages and leaving more than 2,400 people dead.Women and children have been disproportionately affected by the disaster, the UN has said, and make up more than 90% of the dead.      Full news...