CIVICUS discusses the rights of women and minorities under Taliban rule in Afghanistan with Rahima Danishyar, an Afghan independent civil society activist.

Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have issued several laws and decrees that restrict civic space and severely curtail the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. The restrictions fall hardest on women and girls from ethnic and religious minorities. The Taliban have also used abductions, arbitrary detention and killings to silence critics. Despite the crackdown, women human rights defenders and civil society groups continue to find ways to keep working and advocating for change.

What’s the status of women and girls under Taliban rule?

Women and girls in Afghanistan live under an institutionalised system of gender apartheid. The Taliban have issued several decrees designed to remove women from public life and strip them of their agency. The most damaging is the full ban on education for girls beyond the sixth grade and at university level, which robs an entire generation of any intellectual or professional future.

The same logic applies in the economy, where women are barred from working in civil society organisations, government offices and international agencies. Without work, they have lost their financial independence.

The Taliban’s ideology does not recognise women as equal human beings. Their rules have devalued women’s humanity and denied them every fundamental right, including freedom of movement. Requirements such as the mandatory male chaperone, known as ‘mahram’, and dress codes enforced by the morality police have turned homes into psychological prisons. Women live in fear and under constant surveillance, with no legal protection and no route to justice.

How do the Taliban treat ethnic and religious minorities?

This is a strictly mono-ethnic regime, built on ethnic supremacy and structural prejudice against every other group. Hazara people have been hit hardest, particularly women and girls, who face double discrimination for their gender and ethnicity and are singled out and detained on the pretext of ‘bad hijab’.

The persecution does not stop at pushing people out of public life. Minority communities are losing their land. The Taliban are confiscating ancestral properties and handing them over to Kuchi nomadic communities and their affiliates. Their members also rob and extort minority communities. No one is ever held to account.

What methods do the Taliban use to silence dissent?

Anyone who opposes them or does not fall in line with their ideology is arbitrarily detained. That includes people accused of breaking the dress code, protesters and women human rights defenders. Taliban forces watch women and girls in public spaces, follow them and abduct them.

Inside detention centres there is no law. Reports and testimonies confirm that guards torture women and use sexual violence, including rape, to break their spirit. Those from minorities such as the Hazara are the most exposed.

The suffering does not end with release. Honour-related threats, social stigma and trauma push survivors and their families into silence, too frightened to speak out about the atrocities committed against them.

Repression is not limited to women. The Taliban go after former military and security personnel and routinely assassinate them. They blame the killings on ‘unknown gunmen’ to cover up the purge.

How are women’s rights defenders continuing to work under these conditions?

Despite the climate of terror and constant surveillance, women’s rights defenders and civil society organisations refuse to be silenced and remain committed to the struggle to reclaim our fundamental rights. We now work fully undercover, without pause, to amplify the voices of Afghan women to the wider world.

To counter the ban on female education, we have set up secret home-based literacy schools and underground vocational centres for girls, turning private homes into spaces for learning and solidarity.

We also rely on secure, encrypted digital platforms to communicate, document human rights violations and raise awareness internationally. While the physical space for civil society has been erased, our underground and remote operations keep the fight for human rights alive from the shadows.

What should states and international organisations do to support human rights in Afghanistan?

They must move from statements of condemnation to real action so people in Afghanistan can reclaim their fundamental rights. Foreign governments should maintain a firm policy of non-recognition of the Taliban regime and reject any normalisation until the rights of all citizens, particularly women, girls and minorities, are fully restored. Human rights must never be traded for political convenience.

Donors must bypass Taliban-controlled channels entirely and fund independent, local and underground women’s rights networks directly, since these are the ones leading resistance on the ground.

Protection mechanisms for rights defenders at risk must be expanded quickly, including fully funded scholarships, humanitarian visas and priority relocation streams.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.