by Adele

On Aug. 15, the Taliban celebrated the fourth anniversary of its return to power in Afghanistan. Women, banned from public festivities, held indoor protests. Signs read, “August 15 is a Dark Day” and “Forgiving the Taliban is an Act of Enmity against Humanity.” Their press release said, “This day marks the beginning of a black dominion that excludes women from work, education, and social life. We, the protesting women, remember this day, not as a memory, but as an open wound of history, a wound that has not yet healed. The fall of Afghanistan was not the fall of our will. We stand, even in darkness.” Furthermore, Hanifa Girwal, an Afghan woman human rights activist, gave a speech on Sept, 17t, at the UN Security Council warning: “Afghanistan is facing the worst human rights, humanitarian, environmental and political crises in its history, which is not only going to impact us, the Afghan people, but the stability of the region and global peace.”

This fundamentalist Islamist movement increasingly restricts women’s rights, freedom, and influence. Under the Taliban women

• in public must be completely covered
  
• can’t travel unless escorted by a male relative.
  
• almost all employment is outlawed
  
• no education past the sixth grade
  
• books authored by women are banned from universities
  
• are banned from looking directly at any unrelated man, speaking loudly or singing in public
  
• are banned from parks, gyms, restaurants, most public places
  
• the Taliban abolished the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the World Bank’s Women’s Economic Empowerment and Rural Development Program
  
• in September the Taliban promoted the removal of women’s pictures from their national identity cards, depriving women of citizenship. Women initiated a media campaign in protest with the slogan: “My photo, my identity.”

WOMEN-HEADED FAMILIES ARE STARVING

With these rules and bans, women cannot support their families in a society where uncounted thousands of husbands, brothers and fathers are dead or disabled from wars or are employed abroad. In September, dozens of women marched demanding payment of their pensions suspended four years ago. Authorities told them to beg and then made begging illegal, arresting 60,000 people in Kabul alone. Imprisoned women describe brutal conditions including hard labor, beatings and being forced to watch jailers beat children to death. They are often raped by “morality police” and others. A recent law instituted death by stoning for women found guilty of “adultery,” including rape victims.

Public healthcare has collapsed. Male doctors are banned from treating women and women cannot be trained as doctors. After a September earthquake, women buried under rubble were not rescued and couldn’t receive medical attention as male rescue teams were not allowed to touch them.

WOMEN ALWAYS FIGHT FOR THEIR FUTURE

Afghan women, fighting depression, have never given up fighting for their human rights. In 2022, dozens of teenage girls demonstrated in Kabul for the right to attend school. As they did from 1996 to 2001 when the Taliban first ruled Afghanistan, women organized underground schools for girls in private homes. Girls in other countries use the phone and internet, tutoring friends. The Afghanistan branch of Women’s Declaration International (WDI) organizes unemployed Afghan teachers for online classes of girls joining from their homes. In Afghanistan, Women Online University enrolled 17,000 students in 15 subjects, especially the sciences. The School of Leadership, Afghanistan, created SOLAx, a free educational curriculum on the WhatsApp phone application. It can be used by Afghan girls anywhere worldwide.

WDI Afghanistan and the Women’s Rights Network hold online meetings for Afghan women to share news updates and express their feelings; they also provide an educational package for teachers who live outside of Afghanistan who instruct children aged nine through 14, including information on the UN Rights of the Child and Afghan girls’ letters, poetry, and artwork.

The Taliban retaliated on Sept. 30 by shutting down the internet countrywide with the usual excuse that it was “promoting vice.” Internet was restored Oct. 3, due to its necessity in running businesses like the airport. But the Taliban is talking with internet providers on how to restrict access to some businesses and citizens. It ordered telecom companies to provide it with users’ calls and online activity.

Determined to crush women’s secular education, their hopes and dreams, the regime created mandatory fundamentalist indoctrination madras schools for girls, forcing families to send them by withholding food and job offers if families declined. There girls are taught cherry-picked parts of the Koran to convince them that they are not suited for careers or to influence the public and must accept their stifling subordination as demanded by god.

Initially the UN and many countries opposed the Taliban as a terrorist organization. By 2024, many began dealing with them as a legitimate political group. This despite the fact that on July 8, 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the Supreme Leader and the Chief Justice of the Taliban for crimes against humanity, especially women and girls.

On Oct. 6, the UN Human Rights Council established an Independent Investigative Mechanism on Afghanistan, collecting evidence of international crimes. On Oct. 8–10, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal held a Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan in Madrid, Spain. Led by Afghan civil society organizations, it created an international panel of judges, lawyers, and academics trained in constitutional, international, human rights and Islamic law. They heard Afghan women’s testimonies to analyze the Taliban’s system under international law and present an indictment.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan shows how quickly a country can collapse into authoritarianism and the damage caused when women cannot participate in society. It is important for activists to constantly find solutions, raise worldwide awareness, and fight for institutional accountability. Recent developments show activists’ efforts are making progress but, trampling on women’s human rights, U.S. Republicans backed President Trump’s cancellation of USAID funds, gutted programs in Afghanistan meant to help women and girls, including safe houses and grants for human rights defenders and media organizations, some run by women.