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...

Indian Express News: Afghan women feel scared or unsafe leaving their homes alone because of Taliban decrees and enforcement campaigns on clothing and male guardians, according to a report from the UN mission in Afghanistan.The report, issued Friday, comes days before a UN-convened meeting in the Qatari capital is set to start, with member states and special envoys to Afghanistan to discuss engagement with the Taliban and the country’s crises, including the human rights situation.      Full news...

RAWA NEWS: On 19th November 2023 the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, with this title, proudly presents on its website funds of 4.5 million euros for 2022 specifically aimed for supporting Afghan women.In particular, they said the support is in favor of “Fawzia Koofi, the first vice-president of the Afghan Parliament, as well as former President of the Commission for women’s issues and human rights, who after the fall of Kabul into the hands of Taliban, continued to fight to promote the rights of Afghan women and girls. In June 2022, thanks to the support of the Women’s Peace Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), Fawzia Koofi traveled to Geneva to ask the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold a debate on the women’s and girls’ rights crisis in Afghanistan. ...Fawzia Koofi’s denunciation activity would probably not have been possible without the contribution of the United Nations WPHF...”      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...

The Hindu News:A Taliban official said journalists were committing “a major sin” by taking pictures, Afghan media reported on Wednesday. Television and pictures of living things were banned under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been imposed since authorities took back power in Afghanistan in 2021. “Taking pictures is a major sin,” Mohammad Hashem Shaheed Wror, a senior official in the justice ministry, told a seminar for department staff in the capital Kabul on Tuesday, according to footage broadcast by several media.      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...

ANF News: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) sent a message to the internationalist women struggling in Rojava on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the international conspiracy that led to Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s abduction from Kenya and handover to Turkey on 15 February 1999.We, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, advocate united struggle and solidarity for the release of Abdullah Öcalan and all political prisoners.For more than half a century, Afghan women have been living under the heavy burden of imperialism and oppressive fundamentalist regimes. Recently, the Taliban regime has further oppressed women and ignored everything related to them. It has usurped women's rights and dignity, confined them to their homes and imposed compulsory head covering, arresting those who do not comply.      Full news...

Taipei Times News: Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday said that Afghanistan’s public health system has been hit hard following a sharp reduction in foreign assistance, coupled with serious Taliban abuses against women and girls, jeopardizing the right to healthcare for millions of Afghans. In a new report, the New York-based watchdog said this has left the “Afghan population increasingly vulnerable to severe malnutrition and illness” among other effects of inadequate medical care.      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...