KABUL August 2026 marks Five Years of Taliban Rule returned to power in Afghanistan, and for millions of women and girls, the anniversary is not a moment of reflection but a continuation of systematic exclusion. International agencies, human rights organizations, and Afghan civil society say the de facto authorities have issued more than 100 decrees targeting women and girls, transforming Afghanistan into the world’s most repressive environment for half its population.
Education Locked Out
Afghanistan is now the only country in the world that bans girls from secondary and higher education. Within weeks of the takeover in August 2021, secondary schools for girls were closed. By December 2022, universities were effectively closed to women as well. In 2025, medical graduation examinations were held without female participation for the second consecutive year after women were banned from medical institutes in December 2024. According to UNESCO, 2.2 million girls remain excluded from secondary education, and the teaching of human rights and gender studies has been explicitly prohibited. In 2025, the Taliban also canceled 18 university courses, including midwifery, gender studies, and women’s sociology, and removed roughly 140 books authored by women from consideration.
Employment and Public Life
Women were barred from civil service work in November 2021, and by January 2026, those who had been kept on reduced salaries were told their employment was effectively terminated with minimal transparency and no due process. Bans on work for NGOs followed in December 2022, and restrictions on UN female staff were tightened by April 2023. Women are also excluded from media: since 2021, more than 80 percent of women working in journalism have lost their jobs, and the 2024 “Morality Law” prohibits women from speaking on radio. The result is stark: nearly 80 percent of young Afghan women are now not in education, employment, or training, compared with 20 percent of young men.
Public Space and Mobility
Restrictions on movement have become tighter with time. Women cannot travel more than 72 kilometers without a male chaperone, or mahram, and in many cases that chaperone is the very person from whom a woman may need protection. They are barred from parks, gyms, baths, and amusement parks unless accompanied by a mahram, and from driving altogether. A 2024 UN consultation found that around 8 in 10 Afghan women reported being denied access to public space in the previous year even when accompanied by a mahram, and roughly 7 in 10 said they felt unsafe going outside alone.
The Morality Law and Corporal Punishment
The Law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, introduced in August 2024, formally codified earlier hijab instructions into a sweeping morality framework. The law classifies a woman’s voice in public as awrah, or something to be concealed, and is enforced by thousands of morality inspectors. Further directives require full covering with no visible body parts, adornment, or fragrance. In 2025, Afghanistan’s Supreme Court announced public floggings of at least 170 women. Women are disproportionately prosecuted for so-called “moral” crimes such as adultery and “illicit relationships,” and those fleeing forced marriage, domestic violence, or rape are frequently recharacterized as offenders rather than victims.
Justice and Health Care
The justice system has been rebuilt to exclude women entirely. All judges appointed under the previous government, including approximately 270 women, have been dismissed and replaced by Taliban-affiliated men without formal legal training. There are no women judges, prosecutors, or officially registered lawyers left in the country. Meanwhile, women have been barred from studying medicine, midwifery, nursing, radiology, and dentistry since December 2024, closing off the pipeline of female health workers that Afghan women depend on for culturally appropriate care. The UN Special Rapporteur has found these restrictions to be deliberate policy choices rather than resource constraints.
Humanitarian Consequences
Afghanistan is experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Almost 22 million people, or 45 percent of the population, need aid to survive. Female-headed households are disproportionately affected: 88 percent are unable to meet basic needs, compared with 74 percent of male-headed households. The UN has warned that life for ordinary Afghans, especially women and girls, has worsened sharply under Taliban rule, and that the international community risks normalizing a system that the Special Rapporteur has described as one of the world’s most devastating examples of the systematic persecution of women and girls.
International Response
UN agencies, human rights monitors, and several governments continue to document the deterioration, but Afghanistan’s women remain largely isolated from global institutions. In September 2025, Taliban security forces prevented Afghan women, including UN staff and contractors, from entering UN premises. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Taliban leader and the Chief Justice, yet accountability mechanisms remain limited. Equality Now and other advocacy groups argue that five years on, the international community has failed to prevent the normalization of what they describe as gender apartheid.
Five years after the Taliban’s return, Afghan women and girls have not only been excluded from education, work, and public life they have been made legally invisible in the country they call home.
UN Women, UN News, OHCHR, UNESCO, Human Rights Watch, Equality Now, Georgetown GIWPS
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