Meryl Streep: ‘A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan’

Speaking with Afghan activists the actor condemned the Taliban’s draconian restrictions on women and called on the UN to protect and restore their rights

The American actor Meryl Streep has said that “a squirrel has more rights” than an Afghan girl under the current Taliban regime.

Streep, who attended an event on the situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan as part of the UN general assembly in New York, called the Taliban’s draconian restrictions on women’s lives a form of “suffocation”.