RASC News Agency: Nearly five years after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has become the site of one of the most comprehensive systems of state-engineered repression in the contemporary world. What an increasing number of international observers now describe as “gender apartheid” is neither an unintended consequence of cultural conservatism nor the byproduct of administrative dysfunction.
According to a report published by International Policy Digest, it represents a deliberate philosophy of governance one institutionalized through law and enforced through coercion. This system subordinates women while simultaneously consolidating the regime’s control over virtually every aspect of public and private life. The growing body of evidence assembled by the United Nations, human rights organizations, legal scholars, and Afghanistani civil society actors points not merely to authoritarian rule, but to a governing structure that is totalitarian both in design and execution.
Since reclaiming power in Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban have issued more than 230 decrees, directives, and regulations specifically targeting women and girls. These measures are not isolated policies introduced in response to particular circumstances. Rather, they form a dense and interconnected legal architecture intended to eliminate women from Afghanistan’s social, political, economic, and cultural spheres.
Access to education, employment, healthcare, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion has been systematically restricted. During a United Nations Security Council briefing on 8 June, Mitra Mehran, founder of the Afghanistan Justice Archive, described this framework as “a comprehensive system of gender discrimination unprecedented in modern history.”
At the center of this system lies the Taliban’s doctrine of “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” (PVPV). Far from serving merely as a set of moral guidelines, it has evolved into a powerful instrument of social control. Under these regulations, women’s presence in public life has been effectively criminalized. Their voices, appearance, behavior, and participation in communal spaces are subject to constant surveillance and regulation.
As Mehran told Security Council members, the objective extends beyond limiting women’s opportunities; it is the complete exclusion of women from public life. Women are no longer regarded as equal citizens entitled to participate in society, but rather as individuals expected to disappear from it.
What began as a series of restrictive edicts has gradually been transformed into formal legislation. In January this year, the Taliban enacted a new criminal procedure law that institutionalizes gender inequality at the highest levels of the legal system. The legislation divides society into categories of “free persons” and “slaves,” embeds male supremacy throughout its provisions, and creates conditions that effectively legitimize domestic violence against women.
Among its most alarming features is the stark disparity in prescribed punishments. Under the law, a husband who subjects his wife to severe abuse may face a maximum sentence of just 15 days’ imprisonment, while cruelty toward a bird can carry a prison term of up to five months.
This comparison is not merely symbolic. It reflects a legal framework in which women’s bodily integrity and personal security receive less protection than animal welfare. Such disparities are not administrative oversights; they constitute explicit statements of political and moral intent.
The law also extends the Taliban’s reach far beyond the household. It imposes penalties including imprisonment, flogging, and even execution for criticism of Taliban leadership. Citizens may be punished for failing to report gatherings involving political opponents or critics of the regime. Ordinary acts associated with civic life political discussion, social organization, independent thought, or peaceful assembly have increasingly been criminalized. Through the force of law, dissent is redefined as deviance, and obedience becomes a prerequisite for survival.
In May, the regime deepened this legal transformation by introducing legislation governing marital separation, further restricting women’s ability to seek divorce while simultaneously facilitating child marriage. The cumulative effect of these measures is unmistakable: each new law reinforces the same underlying principle that women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are not autonomous legal actors. Their rights, choices, and futures remain subject to the authority of male guardians and the state itself.
Yet Taliban control does not rely solely on courts and legislation. Its endurance depends upon an expansive system of social surveillance that penetrates neighborhoods, workplaces, and homes. Morality police patrol public spaces to enforce compliance with Taliban directives, while Afghanistani men are increasingly expected to monitor and regulate the conduct of their female relatives. Families themselves become instruments of enforcement, incorporated into the regime’s wider architecture of control.
The result is a system in which restrictions operate simultaneously across multiple levels. Women encounter limitations in public spaces while also facing pressure and surveillance within their own homes. As Mehran testified before the Security Council, meaningful freedom both inside and outside the home has effectively ceased to exist.
For those who challenge Taliban policies, the consequences can be severe. Human rights organizations have documented cases involving home raids, arbitrary detention, prolonged imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, forced stripping, individual and gang rape, and extrajudicial killings targeting women’s rights defenders and political opponents. These incidents are not isolated abuses; they form part of a broader strategy aimed at deterring resistance and instilling fear.
This repression also transcends ethnic and religious boundaries. Shia and Ismaili communities have been particularly vulnerable, with women from these groups often facing overlapping forms of discrimination and abuse. In this sense, the Taliban project is not solely about gender. It combines gender-based oppression with sectarian exclusion, producing a system in which multiple identities become grounds for marginalization. Its control is comprehensive precisely because it operates through several intersecting hierarchies simultaneously.
The consequences of Taliban rule extend far beyond political repression. Afghanistan is now confronting a humanitarian catastrophe of staggering proportions. According to a March report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, approximately 21.9 million Afghanistani people nearly 45 percent of the population require humanitarian assistance. More than 2.2 million girls remain barred from secondary and higher education, while over three million children suffer from acute malnutrition.
The collapse of the country’s healthcare system has intensified the crisis. Human Rights Watch reported that more than 400 healthcare facilities closed during 2025 alone following reductions in international funding. Between November 2025 and March 2026, over 17 million Afghanistani citizens experienced food insecurity. For millions of families, the struggle is no longer solely about political rights or social participation; it is about securing food, medicine, and the most basic necessities for survival.
Compounding these challenges, the Taliban have increasingly obstructed humanitarian operations. Since September 2025, Taliban authorities have barred Afghanistani women including United Nations staff members, contractors, and aid workers from accessing UN facilities across the country. These restrictions have severely disrupted relief efforts, particularly because female aid workers are often indispensable for reaching women beneficiaries in conservative communities.
The funding outlook is equally bleak. By the time of the Security Council briefing in June 2026, only 15 percent of the US$1.71 billion required for Afghanistan’s humanitarian response plan had been secured. The gap between humanitarian needs and available resources is no longer merely concerning it is catastrophic. Millions remain dependent upon assistance that the international community has thus far failed to provide adequately.
The global response to Taliban rule has consistently been shaped by tension between engagement and accountability. Advocates of diplomatic engagement have frequently argued that dialogue offers the best path toward moderation. Yet nearly five years of evidence suggest otherwise. Rather than encouraging reform, international accommodation has often afforded the Taliban additional political space to consolidate power and deepen repression.
The Doha process illustrates this contradiction. Once promoted as a mechanism for constructive engagement, it has increasingly been criticized for systematically excluding Afghanistani women and civil society representatives from critical discussions. A process ostensibly designed to shape Afghanistan’s future has repeatedly marginalized those most profoundly affected by Taliban policies.
As participants emphasized during the Security Council briefing on 18 June, diplomatic engagement that grants legitimacy to the Taliban without meaningful human rights conditions risks producing outcomes directly contrary to its stated objectives. Instead of fostering moderation, such an approach may normalize repression and diminish incentives for change. The result is a permissive environment in which authoritarian control expands while accountability remains elusive.
Civil society organizations, legal experts, and UN bodies have repeatedly urged governments to refrain from actions that could normalize or legitimize Taliban governance absent robust human rights guarantees. These warnings reflect growing concern that international engagement, in the absence of clear conditions, may inadvertently strengthen the very structures of oppression it seeks to influence.
Afghanistan has increasingly become what Mitra Mehran described before the Security Council as “a defining test for multilateralism.” The central question confronting the international community is no longer whether rights violations are occurring the evidence is overwhelming. Rather, it is whether international institutions possess the political will necessary to mount a meaningful response.
This debate gained renewed momentum in December 2025, when civil society organizations formally called upon the United Nations to recognize and codify gender apartheid as a crime under international law. The proposal reflects an emerging consensus among activists, researchers, and legal scholars that Taliban rule represents far more than a collection of human rights abuses. It constitutes a coherent structure of domination designed to remove an entire segment of the population from public life.
What is unfolding in Afghanistan cannot be understood as a humanitarian crisis existing alongside a political crisis. The humanitarian emergency is inseparable from the political system that has produced it. The Taliban’s repression of women is not an unfortunate byproduct of governance; it is the organizing principle upon which that governance rests.
According to International Policy Digest, unless the international community acknowledges this reality and responds with urgency proportionate to the scale of these violations, Afghanistani women will remain trapped within one of the world’s most extensive systems of institutionalized oppression a prison built by the state, enforced through law, sustained by fear, and too often ignored.
