The Head of UN Women’s Country Office in Afghanistan, Alison Davidian, today (13 Aug) told reporters in New York that “three years ago, a woman in Afghanistan could technically decide to run for president. Now, she may not even be able to decide when to go and buy groceries.”

Briefing remotely from Kabul to discuss UN Women’s Afghanistan Gender Country Profile 2024, Davidian said, “today, no woman in Afghanistan has a leadership position anywhere that has influence politically, either at national or provincial level. When women are engaged in the Taliban’s structures, their roles are largely to monitor compliance of other women with their discriminatory decrees. And this political erasure is really mirrored at a social level.”

The UN Women official said, “the Taliban's restrictions on women and girls will affect generations to come.”

She said the Gender Country Profile “shows that by 2026, the impact of leading 1.1 million girls out of school and 100,000 women out of university correlates to an increase in early childbearing by 45 percent and an increase in maternal mortality by up to 50 percent.”

Davidian said, “the world is watching what happens to Afghan women and girls. And in some cases, it watches to condemn, but in others, in others it watches to emulate. Emulate the Taliban systematic oppression. We cannot leave Afghan women to fight alone. If we do, we have no moral ground to fight for women's rights anywhere else. Their fate determines the fate of women everywhere.”

The Afghanistan Gender Country Profile 2024, produced with the financial support of the European Union (EU), provides a snapshot of the current situation regarding gender equality in Afghanistan, noting the previous legal and institutional frameworks (from the period 1978–2021), and examining the current decrees, policies, and practices shaping the gender equality landscape under Taliban rule.
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