UN to engage with Taliban in Afghanistan despite new laws limiting women

The United Nations will continue to engage all stakeholders in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, a U.N. spokesman said, even though Afghanistan's rulers issued a ban on women's voices and bare faces in public and severed ties with the U.N. mission after it criticized them.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric in New York defended the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, and its head Roza Otunbayeva, who said that the new laws provided a distressing vision for Afghanistan's future.

She said last week the laws extend the " already intolerable restrictions on the rights of women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.

The laws were issued after they were approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada. The Taliban had set up a ministry for the " propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice after seizing power in 2021. They say the laws are based on their interpretation of Sharia law.

The ministry