The Taliban is rejecting concerns and criticism raised by the United Nations over new vice and virtue laws that include a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public.

A top UN official is warning that the Taliban’s new vice and virtue laws provide a distressing vision for Afghanistan’s future.

The United Nations chief says legal equality for women could take centuries as the fight for gender equality has become an uphill struggle against rank discrimination and gross human human rights abuses.

Afghan schoolgirls are weeping as they finish sixth grade, knowing their education is over.

The U_N_’s most powerful body is being asked to support governments seeking to legally declare the crackdown by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on women and girls “gender apartheid."

The U.N. envoy for Afghanistan is warning the country’s Taliban rulers that international recognition as the country’s legitimate government will remain “nearly impossible” unless they lift severe restrictions on women and girls’ education and employment.

The United Nations says that since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the country has become the most repressive in the world for women and girls.