Note: This story is part of a series of coverage from the first week of the 2026 UN Women’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70). Read Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

The fourth day of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) brought together a series of sessions tackling two urgent and interconnected themes: the Taliban’s systematic erasure of women and the persistent gap in women’s political participation around the world.

A “Gender Apartheid” in Afghanistan

The session on Radicalization of Education in Afghanistan painted a devastating picture of life for women and girls under Taliban rule, one that speakers consistently described not merely as repression, but as a structured, legally codified system of gender apartheid.

Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, detailed how the Taliban has systematically dismantled the country’s justice institutions since retaking power in 2021. Parliament has been disbanded, the attorney general’s office restructured, and a new body created to police “moral crimes.” Today, there are no women judges, no women lawyers, and no women prosecutors in Afghanistan. Women are barred from speaking on their own behalf in legal proceedings and must be accompanied by a male guardian even to appear before a tribunal.

“The Taliban’s transformation of the legal and justice sectors actively weaponizes the legal and social order to oppress women and girls, their allies, and LGBT+ people,” Bennett said, adding that the lack of international solidarity is emboldening the group.

Zarqa Yaftali, Director of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, echoed this, noting that courts and legal institutions “exist in name only,” repurposed as instruments of control. In a particularly chilling detail, the Taliban’s new penal code, issued on January 1, explicitly permits husbands to beat their wives provided they do not break bones or draw blood.

Metra Mehran, an Afghanistan Advocacy Specialist at Amnesty International and member of the End Gender Apartheid Campaign, noted that the Taliban has issued more than 200 decrees stripping women of their rights, including banning women from reciting the Quran aloud and barring them from mosques. “This is not religion and not culture,” she said. “It is the systemized oppression of women.”

Hanifa Girowal, Vice President of the Afghan group Women’s Rights First, echoed this saying that instead of establishing an independent judicial order, the Taliban is trying to institutionalize a system based on hierarchy and male dominance. She noted that the current “legal system cannot be called a legal system, not even a sharia system, but rather a decree system that is being implemented discriminately.” To close, a troubling rule was brought to light: if a woman visits her family without her husband’s permission, she and her family can be detained for three months.

Speakers called for the establishment of an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan, led by a highly respected figure in human rights and international law.

Greece’s Katerina Patsogianni reiterated her country’s call for the Taliban to honor its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and restore women’s access to education, including the medical training banned in December 2024.

Women in Public Life

The afternoon sessions shifted to a broader global reckoning with women’s underrepresentation in political life and the structural forces that maintain it.

Rosemary DiCarlo, UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, offered a sobering data point that women held just 11.6 percent of parliamentary seats in 1995. Now, that figure has risen to 27.2 percent today, but at the current pace, gender parity in legislatures will not be achieved for another four decades. “Women’s exclusion is a deliberate strategy,” she said, noting that 80 percent of women parliamentarians have experienced psychological violence, including bullying.

Alexander De Croo, the incoming Administrator of the UN Development Programme, argued that the problem is less about rules, as many countries now have sufficient laws on the books, and more about behavior. He expressed strong support for electoral quotas, saying they “force men to look harder” for qualified female candidates. He also highlighted the deterrent effect of political violence, noting that talented women routinely decline to run for office to protect themselves and their families from harassment and abuse.

Emilia Saiz, Secretary General of United Cities and Local Governments, stressed that the problem extends well beyond national parliaments and that at the current pace, at the local government level, it will take 80 years to reach parity.

Several speakers highlighted concrete interventions that are working. In Libya, UN-facilitated dialogue achieved a 35 percent target for women’s participation. In Ecuador, more than 900 stakeholders were trained in responding to violence against women in politics. In Kenya, Senator Catherine Muyeka Mumma described how 21 women senators have collectively advanced 42 bills spanning healthcare, maternal mortality, and environmental policy, and noted that counties have implemented the constitutional two-thirds gender rule, requiring that no more than two-thirds of members in elective or appointive public bodies be of the same gender, increasing women’s representation.

Turning to the US, Martha Guerrero, Mayor of West Sacramento, offered a local success story. Sacramento now has five women on its city council and five women on its school board, and 65 percent of the city’s administration is now female. She described that with a larger proportion of women leaders, priorities shift on policies becoming more inclusive and responsive to families and communities.

Eva Menor, Minister of Equality and Feminism for the Government of Catalonia, pointed to the impact of Spain’s 2007 electoral quota legislation, which mandated 40 percent female representation and helped drive parliamentary participation from 35 percent to 48 percent. She struck a cautionary note, however: “If we don’t hold the line, we see the backlash. Nothing is guaranteed.”

Women’s Inclusion is Not Symbolic

Across all sessions, speakers pushed for constitutional reform, enforceable quotas, dedicated funding, and accountability mechanisms that move gender parity from aspiration to institution. Incremental representation is not enough. As Milka Moraa Ngare, President of REFELA-Kenya, put it: “Women aren’t seeking a title. They are seeking solutions. For them, politics is not an abstraction, but the most practical tool for fixing the economy and their community.”