Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025.

Country Report: Afghanistan (Part 1)

​The situation in Afghanistan worsened in 2024 as the Taliban authorities intensified their crackdown on human rights, particularly against women and girls. Afghanistan remained the only country where girls and women were banned from secondary and university education, while also facing significant barriers to employment and freedom of movement, assembly, and speech. The Taliban also detained journalists and critics and imposed severe restrictions on the media. Afghanistan’s economic crisis left 23 million in need of humanitarian assistance; women and girls were disproportionally affected. 
 
Women’s and Girls’ Rights 
Taliban edicts violated the rights of women and girls to education, employment, freedom of movement and expression. The Taliban have also dismantled protections for women and girls experiencing gender-based violence, created discriminatory barriers to their accessing health care, and barred them from playing sports and visiting parks. Strict hijab and mahram (male guardian) regulations have impeded women from traveling for work or to receive medical treatment. 
 
In August, the Taliban announced a new law on promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, which prohibits women from traveling or using public transportation without a male guardian. Under the law, women and girls are required to cover their faces in public and are prohibited from singing in public or letting their voices be heard outside the house. The Taliban also detained women and girls for not abiding by the prescribed dress code. UN experts have reported that some of those detained have been held incommunicado for days and subjected to “physical violence, threats and intimidation.” 
 
The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, has described “an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity, and exclusion of women and girls.” In September, the Taliban banned Bennett from visiting Afghanistan. 
 
Economic and Humanitarian Crises 
More than half of Afghanistan’s population—23.7 million people— needed urgent humanitarian aid and assistance in 2024, with 12.4 million people facing food insecurity and 2.9 million at emergency levels of hunger. As of November, the UN Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan had received only 31 percent of the needed funds, and humanitarian programs had closed because of the lack of resources. The loss of foreign assistance has severely harmed Afghanistan’s healthcare system and exacerbated the health impacts of malnutrition and illnesses from inadequate medical care. 
 
Women and girls have been disproportionately affected by the healthcare crisis. The Taliban’s ban on women’s employment and restrictions on their movement outside the home have compounded the crisis by creating additional discriminatory obstacles to delivering and receiving assistance on an equal basis. Bans on secondary and university education for girls and women have also meant a shortage of women healthcare workers. 
 
Among those most affected by the healthcare crisis are people with disabilities. Because of aid shortfalls, the few services that had been available for people with disabilities, including physical rehabilitation and mental health support, have largely disappeared since the Taliban takeover in 2021. 
 
Extrajudicial Killings, Enforced Disappearances, and Torture 
In two reports covering the first and second quarters of 2024, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented 98 cases in which the Taliban carried out arbitrary arrest and detentions, and 20 instances of torture and ill-treatment of former government officials or security personnel. Nine members of the former government’s security forces were killed. UNAMA also received reports that individuals who were forced to return to Afghanistan from Pakistan were also subjected to torture, mistreatment, and other forms of harm. Taliban authorities carried out corporal punishments, including public floggings of at least 147 men, 28 women, and four boys. 
 
LGBT people in Afghanistan faced persecution and serious ill treatment that could amount to torture because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. 
 
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025. New York.