RASC News Agency: In a brazen escalation of their campaign against women and international institutions, Taliban authorities in Kabul have blocked female employees of the United Nations and its affiliated agencies from entering their workplaces an action that threatens to paralyze humanitarian operations in a country already drowning in crises.
Reliable sources confirmed that for two consecutive days, Taliban fighters have stationed themselves at the entrance of the UN’s “UNCA” compound in Kabul, physically preventing female staff from entering. Women who had managed to enter the compound earlier were forced to leave under Taliban orders. Several employees of the United Nations in Kabul privately confirmed the incident to journalists, describing the atmosphere as “hostile and intimidating.”
Eyewitnesses reported that on Monday, September 8, agents of the Taliban’s notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice also barred women from entering the “Baron Camp” near Kabul airport, another major UN hub. These restrictions, observers note, represent not isolated incidents but a calculated policy designed to erase women from the public sphere and sabotage international relief efforts.
Since seizing power, the Taliban have steadily expanded their suffocating restrictions on women. In many provinces, female staff have long been prohibited from entering UN offices, and aid officials now fear that Kabul’s new ban will soon extend nationwide. Such a move would cripple the United Nations’ ability to reach millions of vulnerable civilians—particularly women and children—who are already enduring famine, economic collapse, and natural disasters.
Reports in recent months revealed that Taliban intelligence agents have harassed female UN staff in Kabul, stalking them, sending threatening text messages, and making intimidating phone calls urging them to resign. Families of women employed by UN agencies have also been threatened, creating a climate of terror intended to push them out of humanitarian service altogether.
The current restrictions echo the Taliban’s decree of April 2023, when they officially banned Afghanistani women from working with the United Nations. At the time, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that such measures “flagrantly violate international norms and put lives at risk.” Humanitarian officials have repeatedly stressed that the UN cannot deliver assistance without women staff, who are essential in accessing and supporting Afghanistani women—many of whom are forbidden by the Taliban to interact with male aid workers.
By denying female staff access to their offices, the Taliban are not merely obstructing humanitarian operations; they are deliberately weaponizing deprivation against their own population. Analysts argue that this tactic serves two purposes: to reinforce the Taliban’s draconian gender apartheid and to challenge the international community’s resolve. The result is catastrophic—millions of Afghanistani civilians risk losing life-saving food, medicine, and shelter in one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises.
Human rights observers warn that these restrictions amount to collective punishment. “The Taliban are holding aid hostage to their extremist ideology,” one Kabul-based analyst told RASC News Agency. “They are willing to let people starve or die untreated simply to enforce their misogynistic rule.”
The Taliban’s defiance of the United Nations a body that represents international consensus underscores the group’s increasing isolation and authoritarian rigidity. By openly confronting the UN, they signal not strength, but desperation: a regime so insecure that it fears even the presence of women distributing aid.
The world now faces a stark test: whether to allow the Taliban to suffocate humanitarian assistance and further entrench their tyranny, or to impose meaningful consequences for policies that amount to the systematic dismantling of women’s rights and the weaponization of hunger.
