Attachments
This report captures the voices and concerns of women across Afghanistan as they navigate an increasingly restrictive environment for women’s rights. Since its military takeover in August 2021, the Taliban (the de facto authorities (DFA)) has implemented a series of decrees, directives and practices aimed at systematically removing women from Afghan public life and decision-making positions – across almost all sectors. This stream of edicts has also included a ban on girls and young women pursuing secondary and university-level education in Afghanistan.
The near wholesale exclusion of women and girls from broader society, coupled with the overlapping economic and humanitarian crises causing marked deterioration in the living conditions for the overwhelming majority of Afghans, is resulting in shifts in community attitudes towards gender norms and a mental health crisis within families across Afghanistan. On 22 August 2024, the de facto authorities enacted a new decree adopting a law (“On the enforcement of the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice”) containing 35 articles detailing significant restrictions on the Afghan population, particularly women and girls, including banning women’s faces and voices in public, with potentially arbitrary and severe enforcement mechanisms. This research and report capture the situation immediately prior to this newest law, and as such, the situation since has already become more dire for Afghan women and men across the country, at least from an internal normative point of view.
Since August 2022, the United Nations Entity for Women and Gender Equality (UN Women), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) have jointly undertaken quarterly consultations with a wide spectrum of Afghan women, and, more recently, also with Afghan men, inviting respondents to share their opinion on the issues impacting their lives. These consultations articulate women’s priorities and requests to the DFA and international community, while contributing to internationally mandated requirements to ensure the full, equal and meaningful participation of Afghan women in any discussions concerning the future of their society and state. The quarterly consultations provide critical insights for both national and international policymakers, shedding light on the lived experiences and perspectives of women across Afghanistan.