RASC News Agency: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in its most recent assessment of Afghanistan, has issued a damning verdict on Taliban rule, declaring that the group “does not represent the people and has become increasingly repressive.” The report prepared for the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council taking place this week covers the period from August 2024 to July 31, 2025, and paints a bleak picture of Afghanistan under Taliban control. It details how decrees, policies, and institutional practices imposed by the Taliban have systematically dismantled human rights, restricted basic freedoms, and entrenched authoritarian governance.
According to the report, ordinary Afghanistani citizens are caught in a devastating cycle of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and climate-induced disasters such as prolonged droughts and flash floods. The findings estimate that 9.5 million people face acute food insecurity, while 4.6 million mothers and children suffer malnutrition a crisis made worse by Taliban prohibitions that cripple humanitarian operations and ban women from working in critical aid sectors. The OHCHR highlighted that Taliban edicts particularly the harsh enforcement mechanisms of the so-called “Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” have systematically eroded civil, political, social, and cultural rights. For women and girls, these restrictions amount to gender apartheid, deliberately designed to erase half the population from public life. International rights experts emphasize that these policies are not accidental but constitute an organized campaign of persecution and intimidation aimed at silencing Afghanistani women.
This assessment aligns with Afghanistan’s fourth periodic review before the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in July 2025, which concluded that the Taliban has “effectively removed women from public life.” Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands had already referred Afghanistan to the International Court of Justice in September 2024 for systematic violations of CEDAW, underscoring that Taliban rule is being treated not as governance but as a breach of international law. On July 8, 2025, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and his chief justice on charges of crimes against humanity, specifically the persecution of women and girls on gender grounds. Yet despite global condemnation and the looming weight of international justice, Taliban authorities have refused to lift their restrictions. Instead, they continue to double down on exclusionary policies that bar women from education, employment, and participation in public life.
The OHCHR warned that these policies not only violate fundamental human rights but also cripple the economy. Between 2024 and 2026, the exclusion of women is expected to cost Afghanistan nearly $920 million, or 5.8 percent of GDP. “No nation can progress while intentionally excluding half its population and denying them equality,” the report declared. Findings from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) confirm the scale of economic collapse: 75 percent of Afghanistani citizens are now living in livelihood insecurity, an increase of six percent compared to 2023. Declining international assistance in 2025 and the continued freezing of Afghanistan’s overseas assets have further deepened the humanitarian catastrophe, leaving millions without safety nets.
The crisis has been aggravated by forced displacement. In just the first six months of 2025, more than 2.1 million Afghanistani refugees primarily from Iran and Pakistan were expelled back into the country, creating unbearable strain on limited resources and overwhelming humanitarian operations. For many Afghanistani citizens, this report confirms a reality they live daily: that the Taliban are not a government but a repressive movement whose ideology and governance model strip people of dignity, opportunity, and security. Far from representing the nation, they stand exposed before the world as perpetrators of systemic oppression, economic destruction, and crimes against humanity.
