Afghanistan Accountability Index End of Year Report (January - December 2024), Issued June 2025

Background

The second half of 2024 proved more challenging regarding the implementation of quality and inclusive humanitarian assistance, with the de-facto authority (DFA) reinforcement and imposition of ever-more restrictive policies on Afghan women and men that will negatively affect the population’s access to essential services. The promulgation of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MoPVPV) Law on 21 August 2024 codified some existing restrictions, including on women’s freedom of movement and dress, while also introducing new ones, such as prohibitions on music and depictions of living beings, and tightening restrictions on men. On 2 December 2024, the Ministry of Higher Education announced that all public and private medical institutes, including nursing and midwifery classes, would be closed to Afghan women, a consequential move that will have a deleterious impact not only on women’s access to life-saving health services now and in the longer-term but for all of Afghan society – both women and men alike – for generations to come. Further, on 26 December, the Ministry of Economy (MoEc) re-issued Decree 4293, reaffirming the 2022 ban on Afghan women working for national and international NGOs.

Consultations with communities carried out during this period, combined with field visits to remote areas and humanitarian partner surveys – the results of which are outlined in this Afghanistan Accountability Index (AAI) end-of year-report – all highlight the critical role of and need for Afghan women staff, the increasing difficulty in conducting outreach to and addressing the needs of women and girls, and the continued importance of adapting to the evolving context to maintain a principled, inclusive response. However, despite this challenging environment, humanitarian actors in Afghanistan reached 20.4 million people with at least one form of humanitarian assistance, including 6 million women and 5.1 million girls, between January and December 2024.

The AAI examines Afghan women’s participation in the response and efforts by organizations to secure localised arrangements for Afghan women staff to continue working, as well as additional indicators which explore accountability to affected populations (AAP), disability and inclusion, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), the proximity of humanitarian organisations and operations to people in need and localisation efforts. The AAI monitors how well the response was able to adequately meet the needs of the population, ensure their meaningful and safe participation in the response, particularly for the most vulnerable groups and for humanitarian workers, and to maintain safe access. In so doing, the AAI aims to analyse not only the ability of humanitarian actors to access affected populations – and, in particular, Afghan women, girls and people with disabilities – but also the ability of affected populations to access assistance and services themselves.

In addition to monitoring, the AAI aims to shed light on the ‘actionable insights’ of accountability, meaning the steps or corrective actions that organisations need to continuously take to adjust their programmes in light of both the permissiveness of their operating environment and the feedback they are receiving from communities. With this, the AAI is more than just a monitoring system and rather a real-time mechanism to improve and adapt inclusive humanitarian assistance based on the expressed needs and priorities of affected communities.

Note: The AAI follows up on and strengthens the work conducted through the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Monitoring Reports/Pulse Checks produced in 2023, which focused on the ability of the humanitarian community to safeguard the quality and inclusivity of humanitarian action in Afghanistan in light of the increasingly restrictive environment for Afghan women and girls following the DfA bans on Afghan women working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), later extended to the United Nations.