Sahar Halaimzai
“When Western forces left abruptly in 2021, the Taliban were handed the reins of power, their path paved by the failures of a mission that abandoned the very women it claimed to empower.”
The Taliban’s latest ban on midwifery and nursing schools for women marks a severe escalation in the regime’s erasure of Afghan women and girls. This policy is part of a broader system of gender apartheid — a deliberate and calculated effort to eliminate women from public life by denying them access to education, employment and even the basic health care they have fought to provide for themselves and their communities. Malala Fund partners are heartbroken, grappling with further restrictions on their ability to work, feed themselves and their families and continue to deliver life-saving care to the communities they love.
The consequences of this latest edict will be catastrophic in a country that already has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. For decades, midwives and nurses have been the thin line between life and death for women in communities where they are prevented from seeking care from male doctors. In some parts of the country, particularly remote areas, midwives are the only source of health care. This ban will push a crumbling health care system closer to collapse, leaving countless women, girls and infants without even the most basic medical care. In a country already grappling with widespread hunger, climate crisis and instability, this policy is not just another restriction, it’s a death sentence.
Yet while the Taliban’s brutality is undeniable, it is also a symptom of something larger: the failures of 20 years of Western intervention. Justified, packaged and sold as a mission to liberate Afghan women, Western involvement in Afghanistan ended in a chaotic withdrawal in 2021 that rolled out the red carpet for the Taliban’s return. Now, the same women whose rights were the centerpiece of that narrative are left to bear the brunt of its failure, abandoned to navigate the brutal reality of a regime that is systematically erasing them from life.
Framed as a mission to bring democracy and liberate women in Afghanistan, the U.S.-led occupation ultimately prioritised short-term military objectives over the development of sustainable institutions that could deliver for people. Huge sums were allocated to projects that overlooked the complex realities of Afghan society, resulting in making contractors and elites rich while leaving deep-rooted structural inequalities unaddressed. This not only failed to bring about meaningful progress, but also nurtured corruption and prevented Afghanistan's development. Twenty years of these actions left Afghanistan hollow and vulnerable, its institutions crumbling under the weight of failed policies.
When Western forces left abruptly in 2021, the Taliban were handed the reins of power, their path paved by the failures of a mission that abandoned the very women it claimed to empower. Western failures paved the way for the gender apartheid that is unfolding now, an institutionalised, systematic assault on women’s rights that the world cannot afford to ignore. The Taliban cloak their actions in cultural and religious justification, but these policies reflect neither the will of the Afghan people nor the teachings of Islam, which upholds the values of equity and education. Instead, this is about control, a deliberate weaponisation of power to erase women from society entirely.
The international community cannot look away as the Taliban deepen their project of erasing Afghan women and girls from public life. Words of concern are not enough. Tangible action is required. At Malala Fund, we have been leading the charge with our partners to ensure that gender apartheid is recognised as a violation of international law. By codifying it into global legal frameworks, we aim to create clear obligations for states to act, hold complicit regimes accountable and dismantle the global silence that allows such oppression to thrive.
We are at a rare window for action. The U.N. Sixth Committee’s decision to move the Crimes Against Humanity treaty into negotiations creates a critical opportunity to codify gender apartheid as an international crime. Such a step would send a clear message: the systemic oppression of women and girls is a crime against humanity. At the same time, the announcement by the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan that his team will soon apply for arrest warrants in Afghanistan provides a glimmer of hope for holding the Taliban accountable. These are real opportunities to act. But their success depends on leaders committing to justice — not tomorrow, but today.
Afghan women are not giving up. They continue to resist, defying a system designed to crush them. But they cannot fight alone. The world owes them more than symbolic gestures; it owes them action. To stand aside is to stand complicit in their erasure. Afghan women must not be remembered as collateral damage — they have the right to shape their own future.
Author
Sahar Halaimzai
Sahar leads Malala Fund's Afghanistan Initiative, driving advocacy efforts for legal accountability and managing the Afghanistan grant portfolio.