Since 2021, the Taliban has deprived millions of girls from their secondary education. Since 2022, Afghan women have been banned from working for non governmental organizations (NGOs). Since 2023, child marriage has risen so much that 28.7 percent of Afghan girls under 18 were married. Since 2024, the Taliban has prohibited women from even speaking in public.
And since 2025, the Taliban has issued more than 80 decrees, just like the ones above, that specifically target the basic human rights of women and girls. When windows are banned to prevent women from being perceived, when women aren’t even allowed to look at non-relative men, when the Taliban has stated outright that women should ideally never leave their homes unless absolutely necessary–it’s not an exaggeration to say that women are being systematically erased from Afghan society.
All these facts and statistics come from the United Nations (UN), who urged in a 2024 article that the international community avoid any actions that inadvertently normalize the Taliban’s brutal repression. So it’s interesting that the UN is doing exactly that.
In June of 2024, Taliban officials attended the UN-led “Doha process” conference in Doha, Qatar–started in May 2023 to develop a unified approach for international engagement with Afghanistan–after not attending the first two conferences. So what changed?
The answer: the UN organizer’s explicit offer of Afghan women being excluded from the talks.
This move has (rightfully) drawn fierce backlash from human rights groups and Afghan women organizations, who have slammed it as far too severe a concession to persuade the Taliban to attend. It’s crucial to clarify that the Taliban is not representative of Islam–Muslim organizations are among those who have outspokenly condemned the Taliban as well. Islamophobic characterizations are reductive and wildly unhelpful. As Amnesty International states, this “sets a deeply damaging precedent” and risks “legitimizing their gender-based institutional system of oppression.” Not only that, but it treats the rights and dignity of women and girls as a mere bargaining chip to be traded away.
UN officials even had the audacity to defend their decision, claiming that the issue of women’s rights will be brought up in “every single session.. But given that the Taliban has issued dozens more edicts controlling women ever since these supposedly feminist-sans-women discussions, it seems the only thing the UN was successful in was normalizing the Taliban’s extreme misogyny–precisely what the UN itself has urged against. And just this January, the UN Security Council has granted travel ban exemptions for three senior Taliban officials, allowing them their privilege of free movement as millions of women can’t even leave their homes a certain distance without a male guardian.
The UN can protest all it wants, claim it’s supporting Afghan women. But actions speak louder than words, and UN actions say: “the Taliban’s brutal repression of women and girls is okay.”
This loosening of scrutiny is at odds with a prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) currently seeking warrants for the arrest of Supreme Leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the Chief Justice of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’, Abdul Hakim Haqqani for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender-based grounds.
Actions like these are sorely needed to support Afghan women and girls in their fight for equality, who–despite the risk of death, torture, and sexual violence in reprisal–are resisting in ways that put the complacency and complicity of the international community to shame.
Since the ban on women’s voices outside the home, Afghan women have taken to singing and posting such videos on social media. In cities like Kabul, women activists graffiti walls with slogans calling for an end to gender apartheid. Teachers find ways to secretly educate girls. In September of 2024, 130 Afghan women attended the Afghan Women’s Summit in Albania, where they urged the UN to recognize gender apartheid as a crime under international law. Though the international community is replete with empty condemnations, women’s rights activists note that they have little effect. Establishing legal frameworks, like recognizing gender apartheid as a crime, would give prosecutors a standard to hold the Taliban accountable against.
Though this article has roundly condemned the UN for their appalling hypocrisy and shameful acceptance of the Taliban’s institutionalized abuse against women, that’s not to say they should not have a role in correcting this course. The UN–as the most prevalent and recognized international body in the world–must be part of the solution, and fulfill its moral obligation to support this enduring resistance and show the women and girls of Afghanistan that they do not stand alone. It has been 1,259 days of Afghan women and girls living in a waking nightmare, and the UN cannot let it become 1,260.
