India, Aug. 15 -- UN Women Afghanistan Special Representative Susan Ferguson addressed the widescale erosion of human rights of women in the country in a briefing to reporters in New York on Thursday, just ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Taliban takeover.

Since the takeover, dozens of permanent decrees have curtailed women's and girls' rights and dignity.

"The most severe women's rights crisis in the world is being normalised," she told correspondents at the daily noon briefing from Kabul.

For example, last year's "morality law" crystallised the systematic erasure of women from public life, codifying long-standing social norms.

Banned from schools and most jobs, women "continue to feel - and often are - unsafe in public places,...