A report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has revealed that women protesting against the Taliban’s policies in Afghanistan are being denied their rights to peaceful assembly, free expression, and opinion, and have faced punishment for their activism.
The report detailed how the Taliban continues to severely restrict women’s and girls’ fundamental rights through a series of edicts and practices that have effectively erased their presence in public and political life. Women’s freedom of movement is also heavily curtailed, with a requirement to be accompanied by a male guardian, or mahram, for travel beyond 78 kilometers.
“Women’s employment is largely confined to specific sectors, such as health care, primary education, security roles at airports and detention facilities, and a few areas in manufacturing and business,” the report states.
The U.N. described the wide-ranging restrictions as part of a systematic policy of gender persecution by the Taliban. The report also highlighted the continued exclusion of Afghan girls from secondary education, noting that as of March 2024, the ban on girls attending school beyond grade six remains in effect.
Despite the Taliban’s claims of upholding a general amnesty, the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has documented numerous cases of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, and ill-treatment of former government officials and members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) by Taliban forces.
