Afghanistan

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday that the ongoing restrictions on girls’ education and women’s employment in Afghanistan could result in a shortage of more than 25,000 women teachers and health workers by 2030, urging authorities to lift the ban on secondary education for girls. In a new… Read more »

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday welcomed the recent arrest by Australian police of Ben Roberts-Smith, an Australian soldier accused of committing five counts of war crimes in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, as a step towards justice for victims. The arrest comes almost six years after release of the Independent… Read more »

A coalition of United Nations experts on Tuesday issued a press release calling for Taliban authorities to immediately lift their ban on Afghan women entering UN premises, calling the policy a clear violation of international law with life-threatening humanitarian consequences. Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban has imposed… Read more »

The agency UN Women vowed on Tuesday to continue its provision of aid for women and girls in Afghanistan even in the face of stringent restrictions and the ongoing conflict in the region. UN Women Afghanistan special representative Susan Ferguson confirmed: “Despite the restrictions on women and girls and the… Read more »

Amnesty International on Friday condemned the recently adopted “Criminal Procedure Regulation for the Courts” (De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama) in Afghanistan, saying that the legislation violates the rights of women, girls and minority groups in the country. Commenting on the severity of human rights violations  effectively sanctioned by law under this… Read more »

Pakistan’s Defense Ministry said on Friday that the country now considers itself in an “open war” with Afghanistan after the two countries carried out cross-border strikes Thursday night. Pakistan launched overnight airstrikes on targets in Kabul, Kandahar and Paktika hours after Afghan Taliban forces attacked Pakistani military posts along the border.… Read more »

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, on Friday released a report detailing systemic restriction of access to the healthcare system for Afghan women. Bennet found that the Taliban imposed gender-oppressive policies, including limits on their rights to access education, work, and freedom of… Read more »

UN member states should do more to protect the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in an oral statement on Thursday at the 61st Session of the UN Human Rights Council. These calls for urgent action come amidst a recent decree enacted by Taliban… Read more »

UN experts on Monday called on member states to include gender apartheid in the drafting of the treaty on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity. The experts particularly referred to the situation in Afghanistan, urging states to ensure meaningful women’s participation in the drafting process. The Working Group… Read more »

This dispatch was co-authored by Divyabharthi Baradhan (JURIST Staff, Malaysia) and Sarisha Harikrishna (Queen’s University Belfast School of Law, United Kingdom). In a landmark ruling, the Permanent People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan (the Tribunal) on December 11 in the Hague, Netherlands, found that the Taliban de facto authorities have… Read more »

This month marked the beginning of the academic year in Afghanistan. Usually it follows immediately after Nowruz, which fell on March 21st this year. But this year, because several festivals—Ramadan, Eid and Nowruz (the beginning of the new year)—came one after another, the Taliban government announced that the school year… Read more »

There are moments in everyone’s life when it feels as though everything has come to an end—overwhelmed by pressure, stress, and problems. As a woman living in Afghanistan under the systematic violence of the Taliban, I have experienced this deeply. I remember the day my younger sister walked toward school… Read more »

In recent years, several countries—including Croatia, Malta, and others—have recognized femicide as a distinct crime. The Italian government and parliament also took this step, acknowledging that killing a woman solely because of her gender is not just homicide, but a crime rooted in gender-based violence. These legislative shifts are historic… Read more »

It was a late September afternoon when I spotted a pair of beautiful earrings on Instagram. Curious, I followed the account’s links to an online shop. Alongside the other items, they offered curated gift packages. When I messaged them, I learned the owner was a young woman. The shop owner,… Read more »

“Left out here and driven away from there” — this old Dari proverb describes a person who has been rejected from both sides, meaning they can neither stay in the first place nor be accepted in the second. For 20-year-old Yasna, a young Afghan woman, and hundreds of thousands of… Read more »

Pakistan, established in 1947 as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims, occupies a pivotal position in regional geopolitics, navigating complex relationships with neighboring Afghanistan and global powers. While Pakistan seeks strategic autonomy through cooperative alliances, its most pressing challenge emerges from the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a nation it regards as a… Read more »

Is this the last time you’ll hear from me? It could be, as the Taliban’s crackdown on all of our rights has extended to internet technology. A ban on fiber optic internet has begun its slow trickle from province to province, and it could be only a matter of time… Read more »

The earth shook beneath Afghanistan once again, and as rescue workers pulled bodies from the rubble, one devastating truth became clear: half our population remains invisible even in our darkest hour. As aftershocks continue to rattle the earthquake-stricken regions, the images and videos emerging from the disaster zone tell a… Read more »

“I never wanted to study midwifery,” a 20-year-old woman from Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar told me. “But after the university ban, I couldn’t continue to study computer science – the major which was my dream and what I had worked so hard for.” December 20 marked the second anniversary… Read more »

As the global community marked International Human Rights Day earlier this month, millions of Afghan women and girls remained trapped in their homes, cast out of their schools, work and public life by repressive Taliban policy. Last year, in response to these then-already-ongoing human rights violations, the US government announced… Read more »