Jully 27,2022
In less than a year, the Taliban have decimated the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. Soon after they took control of the country’s government, the Taliban said they were committed to upholding the rights of women and girls. Yet they have violated women’s and girls’ rights to education, work and free movement; demolished the system of protection and support for women and girls fleeing domestic violence; arbitrarily detained women and girls for infractions of the Taliban’s discriminatory rules; and contributed to a surge in the rates of child, early and forced marriage in Afghanistan. Women who peacefully protested against these restrictions and policies have been harassed, threatened, arrested, forcibly disappeared, detained and tortured.
The scope, magnitude and severity of the Taliban’s violations against women and girls are increasing month by month. Within a year of its takeover of Afghanistan, the group’s draconian policies are depriving millions of women and girls of the opportunity to lead safe, free and fulfilling lives. They are being sentenced, as one Afghan woman put it, to death in slow motion. This death sentence for Afghan women and girls can only be lifted by major and wide-ranging policy changes by Taliban. The international community must urgently develop and implement a robust, coordinated and effective strategy that pressures the Taliban to bring about these changes.
Amnesty International conducted research on the situation of women and girls under Taliban rule from September 2021 to June 2022, interviewing a total of 90 Afghan women and 11 girls. The ages of these women and girls ranged from 14 to 74 years old, and they lived in 20 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Amnesty International also interviewed six current or former staff members of Taliban-run detention centres; 22 staff members of national and international NGOs and UN agencies and mechanisms; and 10 Afghan and international experts and journalists. The research was conducted through in-person interviews in Afghanistan from 4 to 20 March 2022, as well as through remote interviews.
This report describes a web of interrelated restrictions and prohibitions in which Afghan women and girls are trapped. It shows how the Taliban’s violation of any single right can have pernicious implications for the exercise of other rights. Cumulatively, Taliban policies form a system of repression that discriminates against women and girls in Afghanistan in almost every aspect of their lives.
On 1 July 2022, Amnesty International communicated the key findings detailed in this report in letters addressed to Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi and Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Abdul Wali. No response had been received as of 15 July 2022, when the report was finalized.
