South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019 comprehensive source on the status of minorities in Afghanistan, with data and statistics disaggregated in terms of ethnic and religious groups. Legal Provisions on Minorities in Afghanistan The 2004 Afghan Constitution is believed to be a rather progressive document since it protects the rights of all Afghans irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, and language. According to Article 6 of the Constitution, ‘[T]he state shall be obligated to create a prosperous and progressive society based on social justice, preservation of human dignity, protection of human rights, realisation of democracy, attainment of national unity as well as equality between all peoples and tribes and balanced development of all areas of the country.’ Likewise, Article 7 states: ‘The state shall observe the United Nations Charter, inter-state agreements, as well as international treaties to which Afghanistan has joined, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ At the same time, however, other provisions in the Constitution violate these guarantees. For instance, Article 1 states that Afghanistan ‘will be an Islamic state’; Article 2 states that ‘the religion of the state will be Islam’; and Article 3 stipulates that ‘no law shall contravene the tenets of Islam.’ Article 62 limits the position of the president to an adherent of Islam, stating that ‘the president of Afghanistan shall be Muslim’. The contradictions in the Constitution are further evidence by the fact that while Article 22 prohibits discrimination, neither the Constitution nor other law defines ‘discrimination’. The Constitution further declares that in case the law is unclear, the Hanafi jurisprudence, one of the four schools of thought of religious jurisprudence within Sunni Islam, shall apply. In terms of its international commitments, the government of Afghanistan lags far behind in implementing the treaties to which it is a state party even though it is party to seven out of the nine core human rights conventions. This includes the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). Afghanistan has failed to report under 4