Following the release of UNAMA’s report on human rights violations in Afghanistan, the UN secretary-general's spokesman Stéphane Dujarric asked the Islamic Emirate to very carefully look at this report.

Dujarric asked the current Afghan government to uphold their obligations under international law.

“Our reaction is really to support and echo what Volker Türk has said on this issue, which is for the de facto authorities to very carefully look at this report, consider the findings, and to uphold their obligations under international law, and to hold those people who've committed what could potentially be these crimes, to be held to account,” the spokesman noted.

In the meantime, UNAMA's chief of human rights in an interview with Al Jazeera TV, said that based on Afghanistan's agreement with the UN, human rights violations should be prevented in this country.

“The state of Afghanistan has ... obligations that it has signed up to UN treaties on human rights. Now the de facto authorities have the responsibility to ensure the protection for the people who live within this country,” Fiona Frazer, the Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Afghanistan, added. 

This comes as Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, said that the UNAMA report lacks documentation and corroboration.

“The instances have not been shared with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the point of contact for UNAMA and others. They have not been corroborated with the relevant departments,” he said. “If we look at the overall picture in the theme of the report, this actually shows an improvement in the situation in Afghanistan because we have to have a yardstick by what you measure. You cannot measure or compare Afghanistan to a country that has had peace for centuries and decades. Afghanistan is a country that has come out of 50 years of war. And we, if we compare to 2019, there was 3,403 civilian extra judicial killings… if we compare that to 2022, which is only 70, I mean this is a drastic reduction.”