Since 2021, France says it has handed over 15,000 visa to Afghans, "mostly women, rights defenders, journalists and magistrates". But Delphine Rouilleault, the head of the France Terre d'Asile ("France Land of Asylum") association, said that hardly anyone had landed in France over the past year.

Hamas statement comes days after UN Women said it was "alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities" during the attacks on southern Israel, which authorities say killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and responded with an intense military campaign that has killed 15,899...

The closed-door meeting was one of the highest-level known gatherings of US and Afghan government officials in months, with the Washington team headed by Special Representative Thomas West and Kabul's by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. The US statement did not, however, identify the Afghan representatives -- describing them only...

Women drivers in Saudi Arabia is just one example, Jawhara al-Wabili says, of how women's rights have blossomed in recent years, allowing them to become ambassadors, bank directors, university administrators and even astronauts. Saudi scientist Rayyanah Barnawi took part in a mission to the International Space Station just this past...

The Iraqi presidency said the duchess delivered a written message from King Charles III -- who had himself visited Iraq in 2004. The last time a British royal visited Iraq was in 2006 when the late Prince Philip visited a base for British troops deployed to Iraq as part of...

The Taliban authorities ordered all NGOs in December to stop employing Afghan women after receiving "serious complaints" that women employees were not observing a proper Islamic dress code. Many NGOs suspended their entire operations in the country in protest after the ban was announced, piling further misery on Afghanistan's citizens,...

The university ban is one of several restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 and has sparked global outrage -- including across the Muslim world. The international community has made the right to education for women a sticking point in negotiations over aid...

Pressure is growing among opposition exiles and activists for the European Union and United Kingdom to follow the United States and blacklist the Guards over the crackdown on the four months of protests since the death of Mahsa Amini in September.

Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands arrested in the street violence over Mahsa Amini's d, leading to international condemnation and Iran's removal Wednesday from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW).

More than 300 people have been killed in Iran since protests erupted over the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini on September 16, Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Guards' aerospace division, said in a video published by the Mehr news agency.

The September 16 death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of Iran's morality police has sparked a major wave of protests and a crackdown that has left dozens of demonstrators dead. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has accused the Iraq-based Kurdish groups of "attacking and infiltrating...

In a bilateral meeting last week during the UN General Assembly, Guterres "stressed to President Raisi the need to respect human rights, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "We are increasingly concerned about reports of rising fatalities, including women and children, related to the...

Out of 150,000 marriages registered in 2020 in Saudi Arabia, some 4,500 were unions involving a Saudi and a foreigner, which require a special permit, according to the Saudi statistics authority.

Calling for an end to the mandatory Islamic dress code for women in force since 1983, the Union of Islamic Iran People's Party, the country's main reformist party, appealed to the authorities to wind down the activities of the morality police charged with enforcing the dress code.

Last year, this week, the Taliban launched a final offensive to win back control of the country they ran between 1996 and 2001.

Standing behind her control tower with headphones around her neck, Saudi DJ Leen Naif segues smoothly between pop hits and club tracks for a crowd of business school graduates noshing on sushi.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said 38 percent of women in Gaza faced physical or psychological violence from their husbands in 2019, but Alwakil estimated the true figure to be far higher.

Thousands of Afghan clerics pledged loyalty to the Taliban Saturday but ended a three-day meeting without recommendations on how the hardline Islamist group should govern the crisis-hit country.

Human rights group International Friday urged Moroccan authorities to investigate urgently allegations that security forces last month assaulted five women activists who support independence for disputed Western Sahara.Two of the women reported that they were sexually assaulted, Amnesty said.

Rights groups say that marriage of girl child is widespread in remote, landlocked and marginalised areas in the country.

Head of Kuwaiti Women's Cultural and Social Society has vowed legal action against ministry's restrictions while calling them discriminatory and unconstitutional.

A Taliban delegation headed by Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi is meeting representatives of the US, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, the European Union, and Norway in their first visit to Europe after coming taking over to Afghanistan.