UN concerned by Taliban's arrest of Afghan women and girls for dress code violations
In May 2022, the Taliban government issued a decree calling for women to show only their eyes and recommending they wear a head-to-toe burqa. The Taliban, which returned to power in 2021, has cracked down on the way women dress and behave in public, notably through morality laws forbidding them to show their faces outside the home.
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Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Under Trump, U.S. returns to treating violence against women as a ‘private matter'
The U.S. has been waffling for decades over whether women have a right to refugee protection when fleeing gender-based violence. Under different administrations, the Department of Justice has established and reversed precedents, issued and repealed rulings. But the latest flip-flop by the Trump administration is not just another toggle between rules. In July, the Trump administration's high court of immigration, the Board of Immigration Appeals, issued a deeply troubling decision. The ruling held that a 'particular social group' — one of the five grounds for refugee protection — cannot be defined by gender, or by gender combined with nationality. The ruling, in a case known as Matter of K-E-S-G-, is binding on all adjudicators across the country. The legal reasoning is both unpersuasive and alarming. It seeks to return refugee law to an era when violence against women was dismissed as a private matter, not of concern to governments or human rights institutions. It is part of a broader, ongoing assault by the Trump administration on women's rights and immigrant rights — in this case, attempting to turn back history to 1992. It was in 1993, at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights, when the catchphrase 'women's rights are human rights' gained global prominence. This was a response to the long-standing focus on the violation of civil and political rights by governments, while much of the violence against women was committed by nonstate actors. Women and girls fleeing gender-based violence were considered outside the bounds of protection. But the Vienna Conference marked a turning point, leading to transformative change in how governments and international bodies addressed gender-based violence — because much of the violence in this world is targeted at women. Laws and policies were adopted worldwide to advance women's rights, including for those seeking refugee protection. Under international and U.S. law, a refugee is someone with a well-founded fear of persecution linked to that person's 'race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,' which are commonly referred to as the protected grounds. Gender is not explicitly listed, and as a result, women fleeing gender-based forms of persecution, such as honor killings, female genital cutting, sexual slavery or domestic violence, were often denied protection, with their risk wrongly categorized as 'personal' or 'private,' and not connected to one of the protected grounds. To address the misconception that women are outside the ambit of refugee protection, beginning in 1985 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees issued a series of guidance documents explaining that although 'gender' is not listed as a protected ground, women could often be considered a 'particular social group' within a country. The commissioner called on countries that were parties to the international refugee treaty — the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol — to issue guidance for their adjudicators to recognize the ways in which gender-based claims could meet the refugee definition. The United States was among the first to respond to the call. In 1995, the Department of Justice issued a document instructing asylum officers to consider the evolving understanding of women's rights as human rights. The following year, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a watershed decision, granting asylum to a young woman fleeing genital cutting. The court recognized that claims of gender-based violence could qualify under the 'particular social group' category. Yet the path forward was anything but smooth. In 1999, the same court denied asylum to a Guatemalan woman who endured a decade of brutal beatings and death threats from her husband, while the state refused to intervene. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno found the decision to be so out of step with U.S. policy that she used her authority to vacate it. And so women remained eligible to be considered a 'particular social group' when seeking refuge in the U.S. The view was affirmed by a 2014 case recognizing that women fleeing domestic violence could indeed qualify for asylum. But that progress was short-lived. In 2018, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions took jurisdiction over the case of Anabel, a Salvadoran survivor of domestic violence to whom the top U.S. immigration court had granted asylum. Sessions ruled that domestic violence is an act of personal or private violence, rather than persecution on account of a protected ground. This characterization of the violence as personal or private was in direct repudiation of the principle that women's rights are human rights, deserving of human rights remedies, such as asylum. The Biden administration sought to undo the damage. In 2021, Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland vacated that ruling and reinstated the 2014 precedent, restoring a measure of protection for gender claims. Now comes the recent ruling from the immigration court under the Trump administration. Going beyond Sessions' determination that gender violence is personal, the court is striking at the heart of the legal framework itself by barring gender or gender-plus-nationality as a valid way to define a social group. This erects an even higher barrier for women and girls fleeing persecution. It is a transparent attempt to roll back decades of legal progress and return us to a time when women's suffering was invisible in refugee law. The implications are profound. This ruling will make it far more difficult for women and girls to win asylum, even though their claims often involve some of the most egregious human rights violations. But it does not foreclose all claims — each must still be decided on its own facts — and there is no doubt the precedent will be challenged in federal courts across the country. Another reversal is now sorely needed, to get the struggle for gender equality moving in the right direction again. Our refugee laws should protect women, because women should not be subject to gender-based violence. That is, in fact, one of our human rights. Karen Musalo is a law professor and the founding director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Law, San Francisco. She is also lead co-author of 'Refugee Law and Policy: A Comparative and International Approach.'
Washington Post
3 hours ago
- Washington Post
ICE crackdown imperils Afghans who aided U.S. war effort, lawyers say
One former interpreter for U.S. forces in Afghanistan was detained by immigration agents in Connecticut last month after he showed up for a routine green card appointment. A second was arrested in June, just minutes after attending his first asylum hearing in San Diego. As the administration seeks to fulfill President Donald Trump's pledge to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, attorneys for the men say their clients — Afghans who fear retribution from the Taliban for their work assisting the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan — have found themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The attorneys provided The Washington Post with military contracts and certificates, asylum and visa applications, recommendation letters and other records that described both men's work on behalf of U.S. forces during the war. After Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, President Joe Biden's administration moved to resettle Afghans who had worked for the U.S. government through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program, which grants lawful permanent resident status and a pathway to U.S. citizenship. As of April, about 25,000 Afghans had received an SIV, and another 160,000 had pending applications, said Adam Bates, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Program who analyzed State Department data. But the Trump administration is rolling back programs created to assist more than 250,000 Afghans — including the allies who worked for U.S. forces and other refugees who fled after the Taliban takeover. And while administration officials say SIV processing will continue, advocates for Afghans who served with U.S. troops fear the curtailment of programs they depend on, along with Trump's ambitious deportation plan, jeopardizes those still vying for SIV protection. They point to the arrests of Zia, 36, and Sayed Naser, 33, whose attorneys argue they followed proper immigration processes. The Post agreed to withhold the last names of both men because of the ongoing threats to their lives from the Taliban. 'Zia is not an outlier,' his attorney Lauren Cundick Petersen said during a news conference last month. 'We're witnessing the deliberate redefinition of legal entry as illegal for the purpose of meeting enforcement quotas.' Matt Zeller, an Army veteran whose Afghan interpreter saved his life in a 2008 firefight, co-founded the nonprofit No One Left Behind to help resettle Afghans. He said he fears the immigration crackdown will unwind that effort. 'The Trump administration knows what's going to happen to these folks. They're not stupid. They understand that the Taliban is going to kill them when they get back to Afghanistan,' Zeller said. 'They just don't care.' In response to questions from The Post, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration's top immigration enforcement priority is 'arresting and removing the dangerous violent, illegal criminal aliens that Joe Biden let flood across our Southern Border — of which there are many.' 'America is safer because of President Trump's immigration policies,' she said. Zia worked as an interpreter and cultural adviser at Camp Mike Spann in Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, from about 2005 until 2009, Petersen, his attorney, told The Post. Because of his work, Zia 'suffered and continues to suffer threats to the life and property of himself and his family members by enemy forces and criminal elements,' says a recommendation letter from a supervisor who oversaw Zia's interpreter work. The father of five fled to Pakistan with his family in 2021. There, Zia applied for an SIV, while his youngest brother — already a U.S. citizen — applied for humanitarian parole on Zia's behalf. In April 2024, the State Department approved Zia's SIV application, according to a letter from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. He also received humanitarian parole that year, which temporarily granted him and his family entry into the United States. Zia and his family flew to New York in October, eventually resettling in Connecticut, and was in the process of applying for a green card, Petersen said. 'He rented a home, he'd settled his kids into school, he'd found full-time employment,' Petersen said. Zia was detained by ICE outside an immigration office in East Hartford on July 16 and given an expedited-removal order, Petersen said. The Department of Homeland Security has said Zia is under investigation for a 'serious criminal allegation,' but Petersen said during the news conference that her client does not have a criminal record. Zia, who as of July 31 was being held at Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts, has filed a habeas petition seeking his release from detention. On July 17, a federal judge temporarily blocked Zia's removal from the country. In a court filing, DHS argued that Zia is a 'risk to the national security of the United States.' DHS declined to comment further on the allegations against Zia. Sayed Naser is in a similar situation. According to his asylum declaration, Sayed Naser worked as an interpreter for U.S. troops at a training center in Kabul from 2011 until 2013, before co-founding a logistics company that contracted with the U.S. military to provide transportation, support demining missions and lease heavy machinery. Sayed Naser said he faced 'numerous threats and attacks' for his work: 'over seven of our vehicles were burned by the Taliban,' he wrote in the asylum declaration. 'To them, anyone or any company working with foreign forces is considered an infidel and a legitimate target.' He and his family went into hiding in 2021, after Taliban fighters stormed a relative's wedding in Kabul looking for him, according to his attorney, Brian McGoldrick. Unable to find the man, the Taliban instead killed Sayed Naser's brother and took his father into custody, Sayed Naser wrote in his asylum declaration. After obtaining a visa to enter Iran, Sayed Naser flew to Brazil and then traveled to Mexico. He was allowed to enter the United States in July 2024 after receiving humanitarian parole. He has a pending SIV application and has separately applied for asylum. In June, Sayed Naser was detained by ICE in a San Diego courthouse just minutes after attending his first asylum hearing. Attorneys for DHS had moved to dismiss Sayed Naser's asylum claim, with the agency saying on social media there is no record he assisted the U.S. government in any capacity. An asylum officer determined in July that Sayed Naser faces a credible fear of persecution or torture if deported, according to McGoldrick, and made him eligible to reapply for asylum. He remains in ICE custody at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. 'To the American government: I believed in you. I worked with you. I helped you for years, side by side. I trusted your words and followed your rules,' Sayed Naser said in a June 29 statement to media. 'Now, I sit in detention — treated like a criminal for doing exactly what I was told to do.' Jill Marie Bussey, director for legal affairs at Global Refuge, a resettlement agency that handles refugee placements across the United States, noted that the Trump administration wants ICE to make a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day. 'They don't intend to do this by actually targeting individuals with criminal backgrounds, but rather by stripping the legal protections,' Bussey said. Andrew Sullivan, executive director of No One Left Behind, said the crackdown is another betrayal from an administration that also eliminated temporary protected status for Afghans. 'We stayed there and put troops at risk to try and get Afghan allies to safety,' said Sullivan, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. 'To now look at potentially sending folks back — I think that doesn't honor the sacrifice of the 13 Americans that were killed at Abbey Gate, keeping that airport open to save Afghan allies.'
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
A map showing countries that recognize a Palestinian state and those that plan to
France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Malta announced plans this week to recognize a Palestinian state that does not yet exist. Nearly 150 of the 193 members of the United Nations have already recognized Palestinian statehood, most of them decades ago. The United States and other Western powers have held off, saying Palestinian statehood should be part of a final agreement resolving the decades-old Middle East conflict. This week's announcements were largely symbolic and rejected by Israel, whose current government is opposed to Palestinian statehood. A two-state solution in which a state of Palestine would be created alongside Israel in most or all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war — is still seen internationally as the only way to resolve the conflict. Solve the daily Crossword
