Afghanistan: in The Name of Virtue, the Taliban’s Systematic Erasure of Women.

Photo by Nk Ni on unsplash.com

With the Taliban seizing power over Afghanistan in 2021, the daily lives of Afghans have significantly deteriorated. As a recent report by the UN Human Rights Office reveals, between August 2025 and January 2026, approximately 21.9 million people were in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, representing 45% of the population. Taliban rule has had particularly severe consequences for women and girls, who have experienced a substantial erosion of their human rights.

Since 2021, Taliban decrees targeting women and girls have intensified, severely restricting their freedom of expression and political participation. Most notably, legislation such as the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice not only reinforces the requirement that women and girls must cover their entire bodies and faces, but also prohibits acts such as singing, reading aloud in public, or raising their voices – activities that would otherwise be considered ordinary, but which under Taliban rule can cost a woman her life. 

Moreover, the legislation reinforces already existing restrictions on women and girls’ freedom of movement by requiring them to justify leaving their homes and, when they do, to be accompanied by a mahram, that is, a male relative acting as a chaperone. As a result, women and girls are effectively confined to the private sphere, curtailing their participation in, and by extension their right to, public life. In addition, women’s and girls’ access to basic services such as education, healthcare, and employment is no longer an individual right, but instead becomes dependent on their male counterparts.

This is especially concerning when domestic violence is taken into consideration. As women and girls are unable to leave their homes unless accompanied by a mahram, they are forced into close proximity with their abusers, further endangering their lives. As the UN reports, since 2021 there has been a 40% increase in the risk of violence against women and girls. Additionally, with the Taliban dismantling the institutional framework meant to support victims of domestic violence, approximately 14.2 million women and girls are in critical need of protection and assistance. In practice, then, these measures do not only limit freedom, but actively increase women’s and girls’ vulnerability to violence.

Beyond exposure to violence, the consequences of these restrictions fundamentally shape the future of women and girls. By requiring them to be accompanied by a mahram when travelling and limiting their access to education to grade 7, fewer girls are able to acquire the knowledge necessary to pursue careers in healthcare. Consequently, there will be increasingly fewer women able to provide basic yet lifesaving services to other women and girls. Given that in many provinces they cannot be treated by male professionals, their prospects of survival will also decline. In this sense, women and girls are effectively being sentenced to a slow death. As the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, stated in a recent report to the UN Human Rights Council, these measures “will lead to unnecessary suffering, illness, and death, and could amount to femicide”.

And yet, local efforts to resist the Taliban continue. From Afghan health workers caring for their communities despite increasing restrictions, to women and girls protesting or continuing to wear the veil as they wish, the hope for an Afghanistan in which men and women are treated as equals endures. As the Taliban continues to suppress such efforts, it becomes the responsibility of all actors, from national governments and international institutions to citizens and civil society, not to forget Afghan women and girls, but to stand with them.

written by Chiara Fachin