HONG KONG: The Taliban authorities that rule Afghanistan have imposed a severe interpretation of Islamic law on the population, heavily restricting all aspects of women’s lives.
This week, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity.
The government claims it secures Afghan women’s rights under Sharia law, but many of the edicts are not followed in the rest of the Islamic world and have been condemned by Muslim leaders.
The United Nations has called it a “gender apartheid,” and no country has formally recognized the government since they swept to power in a lightning but largely bloodless military offensive in 2021.
Taliban authorities banned girls from public secondary classes at the start of the new school year in 2022.
A year later, universities were also closed to women.
The last options for education — midwifery and nursing — were banned from teaching women late last year.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls and women are barred from education and the move has been widely criticized by Muslim leaders — including the Saudi-based Muslim World League.
Taliban authorities have made it increasingly difficult for women to work in a bid to keep them segregated from men.
While they held positions throughout the civil service of the foreign-backed government ousted by Taliban insurgents, women have been mostly been fired, forced to stay home, and have had their pay slashed.
Officially, women can no longer work for NGOs and the United Nations apart from in education and health, although the ban has not been strictly enforced.
Women are allowed to work from home or in women-majority businesses, such as textiles.
Private businesses can employ women, but in offices that are supposed to be segregated.
In cities, where women once generally already wore modest clothing and headscarves, huge billboards and posters on shop windows order them to cover their hair, faces and their bodies with a long cloak and face mask.
Women rarely appear on television, and many journalists have been pushed off screen.
They are banned from public spaces such as parks and gyms, while baths and salons have been closed down.
Women traveling long distances must be accompanied by a male chaperone.
In one of the latest orders, women cannot sing or recite poetry in public, and their voices and bodies must be “concealed” outside the home.
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs was shut down and their offices taken over by the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Taliban authority’s morality police.
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With severe interpretation of Islamic law, Taliban restrict women’s lives in Afghanistan
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With severe interpretation of Islamic law, Taliban restrict women’s lives in Afghanistan
- Many Taliban edicts are not followed in rest of Islamic world and have been condemned by Muslim leaders
- Taliban first banned girls from public secondary classes in 2022 followed by universities the next year
Ancient cures and AI: WHO seeks evidence for traditional medicine
- The World Health Organization opens a major conference on traditional medicine on Wednesday, arguing that new technologies, including artificial intelligence
NEW DELHI: The World Health Organization opens a major conference on traditional medicine on Wednesday, arguing that new technologies, including artificial intelligence, can bring scientific scrutiny to centuries-old healing practices.
The meeting in New Delhi will examine how governments can regulate traditional medicine while using emerging scientific tools to validate safe and effective treatments.
The UN body hopes this push will help make ancestral practices more compatible with modern health care systems.
“Traditional medicine is not a thing of the past,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video released ahead of the three-day conference.
“There is a growing demand for traditional medicine across countries, communities, and cultures.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his own message, said the summit would “intensify efforts to harness” the potential of traditional medicine.
Modi is a longtime advocate of yoga and traditional health practices and has backed the WHO Global Center for Traditional Medicine, launched in 2022 in his home state of Gujarat.
Shyama Kurvilla, the head of the center, said reliance on traditional remedies was “a global reality,” noting that 40-90 percent of populations in 90 percent of WHO member states used them.
“With half the world’s population lacking access to essential health services, traditional medicine is often the closest — or only care — available for many people,” she told AFP in New Delhi.
’Evidence-informed’
The UN agency defines traditional medicines as the accumulated knowledge, skills and practices used over time to maintain health and prevent, diagnose and treat physical and mental illness.
But many lack proven scientific value, while conservationists warn that demand for certain products drives trafficking in endangered wildlife, including tigers, rhinos and pangolins.
“WHO’s role, therefore, is to help countries ensure that, as with any other medicine, traditional medicine is safe, evidence-informed, and equitably integrated in systems,” Kurvilla added.
Kurvilla, who studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and taught global health policy at Boston University, said that “40 percent or more of biomedical Western medicine, pharmaceuticals, derive from natural products.”
She cited aspirin drawing on formulations using willow tree bark, contraceptive pills developed from yam plant roots and child cancer treatments based on Madagascar’s rosy periwinkle flower.
The WHO also lists the development of the anti-malaria treatment artemisinin as drawing on ancient Chinese medicine texts.
’Frontier science’
“It’s a huge, huge opportunity — and industry has realized this,” Kurvilla.
Rapid technological advancements, including artificial intelligence, had pushed research to a “transformative moment,” to apply scientific rigour to traditional remedies.
The WHO will also launch what it calls the world’s largest digital repository of research on the subject — a library of 1.6 million scientific records intended to strengthen evidence and improve knowledge-sharing.
Dr. Sylvie Briand, WHO’s chief scientist, said AI can assist in analizing drug interactions.
“Artificial intelligence, for instance, can screen millions of compounds, helping us understand the complex structure of herbal products and extract relevant constituents to maximize benefit and minimize adverse effects,” she told reporters ahead of the conference.
Briand said advanced imaging technologies, including brain scans, were shedding light on how practices such as meditation and acupuncture affect the body.
Kurvilla said she was excited by the possibilities.
“It is the frontier science that’s allowing us to make this bridge... connecting the past and the future,” she said.
The meeting in New Delhi will examine how governments can regulate traditional medicine while using emerging scientific tools to validate safe and effective treatments.
The UN body hopes this push will help make ancestral practices more compatible with modern health care systems.
“Traditional medicine is not a thing of the past,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video released ahead of the three-day conference.
“There is a growing demand for traditional medicine across countries, communities, and cultures.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his own message, said the summit would “intensify efforts to harness” the potential of traditional medicine.
Modi is a longtime advocate of yoga and traditional health practices and has backed the WHO Global Center for Traditional Medicine, launched in 2022 in his home state of Gujarat.
Shyama Kurvilla, the head of the center, said reliance on traditional remedies was “a global reality,” noting that 40-90 percent of populations in 90 percent of WHO member states used them.
“With half the world’s population lacking access to essential health services, traditional medicine is often the closest — or only care — available for many people,” she told AFP in New Delhi.
’Evidence-informed’
The UN agency defines traditional medicines as the accumulated knowledge, skills and practices used over time to maintain health and prevent, diagnose and treat physical and mental illness.
But many lack proven scientific value, while conservationists warn that demand for certain products drives trafficking in endangered wildlife, including tigers, rhinos and pangolins.
“WHO’s role, therefore, is to help countries ensure that, as with any other medicine, traditional medicine is safe, evidence-informed, and equitably integrated in systems,” Kurvilla added.
Kurvilla, who studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and taught global health policy at Boston University, said that “40 percent or more of biomedical Western medicine, pharmaceuticals, derive from natural products.”
She cited aspirin drawing on formulations using willow tree bark, contraceptive pills developed from yam plant roots and child cancer treatments based on Madagascar’s rosy periwinkle flower.
The WHO also lists the development of the anti-malaria treatment artemisinin as drawing on ancient Chinese medicine texts.
’Frontier science’
“It’s a huge, huge opportunity — and industry has realized this,” Kurvilla.
Rapid technological advancements, including artificial intelligence, had pushed research to a “transformative moment,” to apply scientific rigour to traditional remedies.
The WHO will also launch what it calls the world’s largest digital repository of research on the subject — a library of 1.6 million scientific records intended to strengthen evidence and improve knowledge-sharing.
Dr. Sylvie Briand, WHO’s chief scientist, said AI can assist in analizing drug interactions.
“Artificial intelligence, for instance, can screen millions of compounds, helping us understand the complex structure of herbal products and extract relevant constituents to maximize benefit and minimize adverse effects,” she told reporters ahead of the conference.
Briand said advanced imaging technologies, including brain scans, were shedding light on how practices such as meditation and acupuncture affect the body.
Kurvilla said she was excited by the possibilities.
“It is the frontier science that’s allowing us to make this bridge... connecting the past and the future,” she said.
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