UN will continue to engage the Taliban despite new laws restricting women

Taliban fighters celebrate the third anniversary of the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan (Siddiqullah Alizai/AP)

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

UN 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.