The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in its latest quarterly report to the U.S. Congress stated that since retaking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban have systematically stripped the country’s women and girls of their basic rights and established an institutionalized system of discrimination and repression. According to the UN Human Rights Council, these actions amount to “crimes against humanity.”
Citing findings from international organizations, SIGAR noted that the Taliban justify these restrictions through their own interpretation of Sharia law—an interpretation that Islamic scholars say diverges sharply from the mainstream practices in other Muslim countries and serves primarily as a means to consolidate power and enforce societal compliance through fear and control. The report, quoting the UN Human Rights Council, added that this mechanism is designed to “ensure the silence of dissent and control the lives of Afghanistan’s people through fear and repression.”
A key example of this approach, SIGAR highlighted, is the Taliban’s enforcement of the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” law, which grants the group’s agents the authority to monitor the public and punish any perceived disobedience to their imposed norms. SIGAR stressed that this law is part of a broader policy aimed at eliminating women from public life and imposing rigid social models on the entire society.
The report detailed that Taliban policies against women include the ban on education beyond the sixth grade, severe restrictions on employment, mandatory male guardians for travel, enforced full-body coverings, and the prohibition of women from entering mixed public spaces. These measures have effectively erased women and girls from public life. Afghanistan, SIGAR noted, now ranks second to last on the UN gender index, only above Yemen. Women in Afghanistan have achieved merely 17 percent of their potential for enjoying rights and freedoms and attain on average only 24 percent of what men in the country achieve.
SIGAR also cited findings from the UN Gender in Humanitarian Action Group, which in July 2024 interviewed 20,000 women in Afghanistan and found that 70 percent faced obstacles in accessing humanitarian services due to mobility restrictions and the absence of female staff in aid organizations. This comes as 27 percent of Afghanistan’s population struggles with severe food insecurity. The report added that the decline in international aid has disproportionately impacted women, increasing the risk of losing the few remaining health and support services.
