August 15, 2025 – Four years after the Taliban’s return to power, the people of Afghanistan continue to endure an unprecedented human rights crisis. Afghan women and girls have been the primary targets of these discriminatory policies, facing a brutal campaign of oppression that denies them their most basic rights. The Taliban have effectively erased them from public life, leaving deep, irreversible impact on the country’s present and future.
Despite the growing repression, women of Afghanistan continue to resist the Taliban’s oppressive policies and relentlessly demand rights, dignity and justice. In the past four years, Afghanistan’s civic and human rights movement has sustained its efforts at documentation and reporting and advocacy as well as utilizing a variety of intranational mechanisms and pathways to seek accountability and justice.
Under the Taliban rule, ethnic, religious, and the LGBTQI+ also face systematic restrictions and discrimination. The Taliban have deliberately reduced the participation of marginalized ethnic and religious groups in social, cultural, and political spheres. These policies represent a clear violation of Afghanistan’s international obligations and an obvious disregard for global human rights principles.
Additionally, by abolishing the Afghan constitution and national laws, the Taliban have dismantled the very legal foundations meant to protect citizens. This has severely blocked access to justice and created an environment ripe for widespread abuse. This legal vacuum has also allowed for a wave of organized and retaliatory violence against former government employees, their families, human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, and journalists.
Rawadari has consistently and systematically monitored, documented and reported on these human rights violations. Despite serious obstacles and severe restrictions imposed by the Taliban, we have successfully collected reliable data through in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and direct consultations with victims, survivors, eyewitnesses, and credible local sources.
Our documentation reveals a chilling pattern of atrocities, including widespread extrajudicial killings of former security forces, arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions, enforced disappearances and torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishments. This state of systematic repression by the Taliban has intensified a climate of fear and insecurity.
Despite this grave reality, glimmers of hope for justice have emerged in the past year. Recent septs, such as the legal initiative by four countries to hold Afghanistan accountable for violations of the Convention to End all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in September 2024 and the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for two senior Taliban officials in July 2025, are significant steps toward accountability. These developments are a direct result of persistent civic struggle of the Afghan civil society, especially women, who continue to stand for their fundamental rights despite immense oppression.
Inspired by the brave resistance of women of Afghanistan, Rawadari and three other civil society organizations, have taken a historic step. We have initiated a process to hold the Taliban accountable at the Permanent People’s Tribunal for their gross and systematic violation of women’s human rights. This initiative marks the first time Afghan civil society has used this pathway to accountability, demonstrating our relentless resistance, innovative approach and growing capacity to seek justice.
A Call to Action
The global community and the United Nations must apply the necessary pressure on the Taliban to stop the human rights violations and reverse their policies. Additionally, they must demonstrate meaningful solidarity with women and people of Afghanistan through providing support to Afghanistan’s civic and human rights movement inside Afghanistan and in exile.
We call on Afghan civil society organizations to act with greater unity and coordination to strengthen a broad, civic, people-centred resistance against the Taliban’s oppressive policies. Together, we can restore the human rights of the Afghan people, especially women, and ensure that justice, not impunity, prevails.
