By Lara Kajs
Thinking Out Loud
This article examines the Taliban’s systematic restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan since the group’s return to power in 2021. Drawing on field experience and human rights reporting, it analyzes the legal and humanitarian implications of what many experts now describe as gender apartheid.
Since regaining power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed one of the most restrictive systems of gender discrimination in the modern world. Through a sweeping set of decrees, women and girls have been systematically excluded from public life, education, employment, and basic civil freedoms.
Many legal scholars and human rights organizations now describe the situation as gender apartheid—a system of institutionalized discrimination designed to subordinate women and girls across nearly every aspect of society.
Under Taliban rule, restrictions on women extend far beyond education and employment. Women are subject to strict controls over movement, dress, speech, and social interaction. They cannot travel freely without a male guardian, participate in public life, or engage fully in their communities.
Isolation and Economic Erasure
One of the Taliban’s earliest measures was to bar women from working for many humanitarian organizations. In Afghanistan’s gender-segregated society, this decision had immediate consequences: without female aid workers, many women and girls cannot access humanitarian assistance at all. The impact was particularly severe given Afghanistan’s ongoing humanitarian crisis, where millions depend on international aid for survival.
The Taliban later ordered the closure of beauty salons across the country, eliminating an estimated 60,000 jobs for women. Beyond the economic devastation, the decision removed one of the few remaining spaces where women could gather and socialize outside their homes.
Today, Afghan women and girls are told where they may go, how they must dress, and whom they may meet. Activities that many people take for granted—walking in a park, attending school, participating in sports, or meeting friends in public—are largely forbidden.
Women who attempt to challenge these restrictions face severe consequences, including surveillance, harassment, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and violence.
A Personal Encounter With Taliban Violence
In October 2021, I experienced firsthand the dangers faced by those documenting human rights abuses in Afghanistan.
While working in Kabul, a Taliban member approached me from behind and shot me in the back.
The force of the impact knocked me to the ground. I remember struggling to breathe and feeling the warmth of blood at my side. The protective vest I was wearing absorbed most of the impact, but the bullet struck the edge of the armor plate and fragmented. A piece of the round penetrated my side and required surgery to remove.
Had I turned even slightly, the bullet would have bypassed the armor entirely. I survived. Many others documenting abuses in Afghanistan have not been as fortunate.
The Return of Public Punishment
In March, Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada publicly reaffirmed the regime’s commitment to corporal and capital punishments, declaring that women could again be flogged or stoned to death under the group’s interpretation of Islamic law.
Stoning is one of the oldest forms of capital punishment, historically used in various legal traditions. The method involves a crowd throwing stones at a victim until death occurs from blunt-force trauma.
Today, it remains an extremely rare practice globally and is widely condemned by international human rights organizations as a form of torture.
Afghanistan has witnessed such brutality before. In 2015, a nineteen-year-old woman named Rokhshana was stoned to death in Ghor Province after fleeing a forced marriage. The Taliban court in the area ordered her execution. Video recorded by spectators shows dozens of men throwing stones while she cries out until her voice falls silent.
In another widely reported case that same year, Farkhunda Malikzada, a twenty-seven-year-old woman in Kabul, was falsely accused of blasphemy after confronting a vendor selling religious charms. A mob attacked her, beating her before burning her body.
These incidents occurred before the Taliban’s return to national power. Today, with the group fully controlling the state apparatus, such acts face even fewer constraints.
According to statements by Taliban officials, dozens of executions and public punishments have been carried out since 2021.
The Collapse of Legal Protection
For Afghan women, the most devastating change has been the collapse of legal protections.
Before 2021, women had limited—but meaningful—recourse through institutions such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and specialized courts addressing violence against women.
Those institutions no longer exist.
The Taliban have suspended the Afghan constitution and dismantled the country’s legal framework. The result is a system in which women accused of offenses have virtually no access to due process, representation, or appeal.
Without functioning legal protections, the rule of law has effectively disappeared for half the population.
A Crisis the World Cannot Ignore
The crisis facing Afghan women and girls has faded from global headlines as attention shifts to other conflicts, including Ukraine and Gaza. Yet the scale of repression in Afghanistan remains unprecedented.
Women cannot freely leave the country, pursue education, or rebuild their lives elsewhere. For millions, daily life has become a system of enforced invisibility. Human rights experts increasingly argue that the Taliban’s policies constitute crimes against humanity, specifically gender persecution, under international law.
How the international community responds to this situation will have consequences far beyond Afghanistan. If systematic gender discrimination on this scale goes unchallenged, it risks normalizing a form of governance that denies basic rights to half the population.
The fate of Afghan women and girls is not simply a domestic issue. It is a test of the international community’s commitment to human rights, accountability, and equality under the law.
Photo credit: “Women of Afghanistan” by Eric Draper. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Published 15 July 2024
About Thinking Out Loud
Thinking Out Loud is a commentary series by Lara Kajs examining international law, humanitarian crises, and the prevention of mass atrocities. Drawing on field experience in conflict and displacement settings, the column explores the legal and policy challenges that shape contemporary conflicts
Lara Kajs is the founder and executive director of The Genocide Report, a Washington, DC-based educational nonprofit focused on atrocity prevention and international law. She is the author of several field-based books on conflict, displacement, humanitarian crises, and international humanitarian law, drawing on extensive research and field experience in Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan. Her writing and public speaking focus on atrocity crimes, forced displacement, the protection of civilians, and the legal frameworks governing armed conflict.