RASC News Agency: Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, has issued a stark warning over the escalating repression of women in Afghanistan, urging the international community not to remain silent in the face of the Taliban’s systematic policies that deliberately strip women and girls of their fundamental rights. She stressed that what is unfolding in Afghanistan today is not a temporary or isolated restriction, but a deliberate and coordinated project aimed at erasing women from public life.
In a message published on the social media platform X on Sunday, January 4, the UN Deputy Secretary-General stated that millions of Afghanistani women and girls living under Taliban rule are facing widespread deprivation of education, employment, freedom of movement, and personal security. According to human-rights organizations, these restrictions are structural, comprehensive, and intentionally designed, effectively pushing half of the country’s population to the margins of society.
Mohammed underscored the severe humanitarian consequences of these policies, noting that the continuation of institutionalized discrimination by the Taliban has triggered profound concern within the United Nations and across the international human-rights system. She warned that these measures not only violate the rights of women and girls, but also undermine Afghanistan’s social fabric, economic resilience, and long-term future.
She cautioned that international inaction in the face of this trajectory risks conferring implicit legitimacy on Taliban repression, paving the way for the normalization of large-scale human-rights abuses. History, she emphasized, demonstrates that silence in the face of systematic discrimination is not neutrality it is participation in the cycle of oppression.
Reaffirming that “women’s rights are human rights, everywhere and without exception,” the Deputy Secretary-General stated that by disregarding Afghanistan’s international legal obligations, the Taliban have placed the country in direct confrontation with global human-rights norms and principles. This, she said, intensifies the moral and legal responsibility of the international community to respond decisively.
Since returning to power, the Taliban have issued dozens of decrees restricting virtually every dimension of women’s lives, barring Afghanistani women and girls from secondary and higher education, excluding them from public and non-governmental employment, and severely limiting their participation in society. These policies have been widely described by the United Nations, international human-rights bodies, and numerous governments as clear manifestations of institutionalized gender discrimination, with an increasing number of experts characterizing the situation as gender apartheid.
Observers warn that the Taliban’s campaign against women is not merely a domestic policy failure, but a systematic assault on international legal standards, including the UN Charter and core human-rights conventions. Continued global silence, critics argue, risks transforming Afghanistan into a precedent for the unchecked erosion of women’s rights worldwide, with consequences that extend far beyond the country’s borders.
