Attachments
Human Rights Council
Sixty-first session
23 February–2 April 2026
Agenda item 2
Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the
High Commissioner and the Secretary-General
Summary
In the present report the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan provides an intersectional examination of women’s and girls’ right to the highest attainable standard of health in Afghanistan.
I. Introduction
1. Taliban rule has ushered in a widespread and systemic attack on the rights of the people of Afghanistan, foremost women and girls, who are being subjected to an institutionalized system of gender-based discrimination, oppression, and domination that permeates all areas of life, restricting their rights to education, work, freedom of movement, health, access to justice, and to freedoms of expression, association, assembly, and participation in public life. This system amounts to crimes against humanity.
2. Health and health outcomes in Afghanistan have long been shaped by profound structural disadvantage, including decades of conflict, poverty, limited infrastructure, chronic underinvestment, corruption, and aid dependence. The return of the Taliban has intensified these challenges, imposing new barriers that severely limit women’s and girls’ access to health systems and their capacity to make autonomous decisions about their bodies and their health. Discriminatory and gender-oppressive policies described in this report systematically violate women’s right to health.
3. These policies exacerbate a crisis brought on by massive cuts to international assistance that are severely undermining life-saving programs and straining an already overstretched health system. For women and girls, the cuts are converting an oppressive framework into a health catastrophe, leaving millions without essential care.
4. Amid these conditions, Afghan health workers continue to serve their communities with extraordinary skill and dedication. Health remains one of the few areas where women can work. Their commitment underscores the critical need for support to restore and protect the rights of women and girls.
5. Without urgent and sustained international action, Afghanistan faces an alarming trajectory with immediate, cumulative, and long-lasting consequences. Policies that discriminate against women and girls not only violate their rights, they jeopardize the viability of Afghanistan’s health system, with repercussions that will be felt across generations. Ensuring the right to health in Afghanistan is inseparable from restoring the rights of women, girls, and all Afghans.