RASC News Agency: The United Nations Special Trust Fund for Afghanistan has announced that its program to strengthen women-led civil society organizations achieved significant progress over the past year despite the severe restrictions imposed on women under Taliban rule.
According to the UN Trust Fund, the initiative implemented by UN Women strengthened 14 women-led civil society organizations and supported dozens of community-based initiatives, benefiting more than 8,000 people across eastern and western Afghanistan.
The project, which ran from April 2024 through October 2025, was designed to enhance the institutional capacity, organizational resilience, and leadership skills of women-led organizations, enabling them to continue delivering essential services and supporting local communities despite an increasingly restrictive operating environment.
The UN Trust Fund stated that the program was developed in direct response to the escalating restrictions on Afghanistani women’s rights, civic participation, and access to essential services. By investing in locally led organizations, the initiative sought to preserve women’s role in community development, humanitarian assistance, and social engagement at a time when their public participation has come under unprecedented pressure.
The announcement comes as women and girls in Afghanistan continue to face sweeping restrictions following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. The Taliban have barred girls from secondary and higher education, prohibited most women from working in the public sector and many humanitarian organizations, and imposed extensive limitations on women’s freedom of movement, civic activism, and participation in public life.
The United Nations and numerous international human rights organizations have repeatedly condemned these policies, arguing that they constitute one of the world’s most severe systems of institutionalized discrimination against women. According to these organizations, the Taliban’s restrictions not only violate fundamental human rights but also undermine Afghanistan’s long-term economic recovery, humanitarian response, and sustainable development by systematically excluding half of the country’s population from education, employment, leadership, and public decision-making.
Despite these challenges, the UN Trust Fund emphasized that continued international support for women-led organizations remains essential to preserving local resilience, expanding access to critical services, and ensuring that Afghanistani women continue to play a meaningful role in their communities amid one of the most restrictive environments for women’s rights in the world.
