Finn Right International Human Rights Commission, Finland
Today marks 1,739 days since the Taliban seized power in Afghan Women in August 2021.
Over nearly five years, Afghan women and girls have been deliberately and systematically removed from every aspect of public life through an escalating series of decrees, legal prohibitions, and state-enforced violence.
What the United Nations has officially labeled “gender apartheid” is not a set of isolated policy measures it is a coordinated, institutionalized effort to strip half of Afghanistan’s population of their fundamental human rights.
This report examines the ongoing human rights crisis in Afghanistan, with focused attention on the education ban affecting millions of Afghan girls, the total exclusion of women from professional and This report examines Afghanistan’s accelerating human rights emergency, focusing on the deliberate denial of education to millions of girls, the comprehensive removal of women from professional and civic spheres, and the alarming new Taliban legislative measures that are intensifying gender-based oppression.
The Education Ban: Afghanistan’s Lost Generation of Girls
Access to education is a universally recognized human right and one that the Taliban government has deliberately denied to Afghan girls for nearly five years.
According to UN Deputy Special Representative Georgette Gagnon, an estimated 3.8 million girls between the ages of seven and eighteen are currently out of school.
Of these, more than 2.6 million are adolescent girls. Every year, approximately 250,000 additional girls are permanently cut off from secondary education pathways.
The United Nations has described this as “a lost generation of talent and potential.”
While the Taliban initially permitted girls to attend primary school after retaking power, they enforced a strict ban on female students and female teachers returning to secondary schools.
Taliban officials have repeatedly deflected international pressure by citing lack of funding or the need to revise the curriculum according to their interpretation of Islamic law while simultaneously rejecting the international community’s key condition of reopening girls’ secondary schools for any diplomatic recognition.
In a significant and alarming development, Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada recently appointed Habibullah Agha a loyalist cleric from within his inner circle as the new Education Minister.
Analysts widely interpret this appointment as a deliberate signal that the Taliban are “elevating loyalists who reject the reopening of girls’ schools.”
Most recently, in Herat province, Taliban education authorities issued new orders requiring female teachers and girls in grades four through six to wear face veils and gloves during school attendance further tightening restrictions on even the limited access that had previously remained.
The Systematic Erasure of Afghan Women from Public Life
The Taliban’s campaign to remove women from public life has accelerated dramatically since 2021.
Since seizing power, the Taliban have issued more than 230 formal decrees many directly and specifically targeting women and girls.
These restrictions collectively amount to a total dismantling of women’s presence in Afghan society. Key prohibitions include:
- A complete ban on secondary and university education for women and girls
- Prohibition from most professions, including medicine and midwifery (enforced by December 2024 decree)
- Barring women from parks, funfairs, gyms, and public bathhouses
- A ban on women walking unaccompanied in parks or speaking on public radio
- Severe restrictions on freedom of movement and participation in public spaces
- A ban on women purchasing mobile phone SIM cards in Uruzgan province
- Afghan Women
Herat once a vibrant center of women’s education, cultural activity, and economic participation has been transformed by the Taliban into what observers describe as a “social laboratory” for testing and expanding gender-based restrictions.
In November 2025, women without a burqa were barred from entering government offices and service centers.
By 2026, reports emerged of women being detained directly on streets and in bazaars.
Taliban morality police detained at least 30 women during the first week of June 2026 alone for alleged dress code violations.
Institutionalized Gender Apartheid: Structure and Enforcement
The Taliban’s systematic oppression of women is not incidental to their governance it is central to it.
The architecture of this oppression is upheld by formal legal structures, dedicated enforcement bodies, and officially sanctioned violence.
The Morality Law and Enforcement Apparatus
Since enacting a sweeping morality law in 2024, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has been granted broad authority to police women’s dress, behavior, and conduct in all public spaces.
Ministry spokesman Saif-ul-Islam Khyber has publicly defended these measures as expressions of “national sovereignty and cultural identity.”
Decree No. 18: Legalizing Child Marriage
In May 2026, the Taliban issued Decree No. 18 officially designated the “Code on Judicial Separation of Spouses” a decree that human rights organization Amnesty International has strongly criticized as one that facilitates child marriage and dismantles every legal protection women and girls previously held over their own lives and decisions.
- Interpretation of a girl’s silence following puberty as legal consent to marriage
- Broad authority granted to fathers and paternal grandfathers to arrange marriages of minors without the girl’s agreement
- Imposing substantial legal obstacles that make it nearly impossible for girls to challenge or break free from forced marriage arrangements
- Men granted the unilateral right to divorce without comparable barriers for women
- Afghan Women
United Nations experts have warned that Decree No. 18 will effectively “license child marriage” across Afghanistan and “prevent women and girls from leaving abusive relationships.”
Protests Against Taliban Rule Met with Lethal Force
Despite facing extreme personal risk, Afghan women have continued to resist Taliban oppression. Small groups have organized flash protests in multiple provinces, though security forces have consistently suppressed them often violently.
In early June 2026, protests erupted across Herat following a wave of mass arrests of women for dress code violations. UNAMA officially confirmed that Taliban forces used live ammunition against demonstrators, resulting in at least one confirmed death.
Local sources reported at least two people killed during the crackdown in the Jebrail district.
Demonstrators carried signs reading: “We will fight for our rights to the end and we will not surrender.” One protest organizer stated: “Under Taliban rule, Afghan women are not recognized as human beings. Today, women cannot go to work, study, or even breathe easily.”
International Response and Accountability
United Nations
The United Nations has repeatedly and formally condemned Taliban policies toward women and girls in Afghanistan. UN experts have characterized the Taliban’s measures as constituting institutionalized discrimination and have called for robust international accountability.
On June 15, 2026, the UN Security Council passed a formal resolution urging Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities to immediately halt and undo their systematic suppression of women’s rights throughout the country.
Finland’s Position
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has publicly described the situation in Afghanistan as “alarming,” stating that the Taliban continue to violate fundamental human rights and impose severe restrictions on citizens particularly women and girls.
Prime Minister Orpo emphasized that Afghan women’s and girls’ rights are being “further undermined every day,” and that “violence and discrimination against them are unacceptable.”
The International Community’s Failure to Act
Despite repeated condemnations, Afghan women remain systematically excluded from the very international forums convened to discuss their future. In June 2026, Afghan women were entirely excluded from UN-led negotiations with the Taliban held in Qatar talks the United Nations itself presented as “a key step in a diplomatic engagement initiative.
” The deliberate sidelining of Afghan women from these proceedings delivers a profound and troubling signal to the world that the perspectives and experiences of the very women affected hold no weight in shaping the decisions that govern their own existence.
As one Afghan scholar currently living in Germany stated: “This regime is a gift from regional and international players. Now it is a prison for its own people and even more so for women.”
The Human Cost: Real Lives Behind the Statistics
Behind every statistic in this report is a real human being whose life has been derailed by deliberate policy. Neelab Noori, now seventeen years old, was in eighth grade when the Taliban captured Kabul in August 2021.
She told reporters: “A girl cannot fulfill her dreams there. Colleges and universities for girls are closed.Education beyond sixth grade remains completely off-limits for girls, leaving us no choice but to leave.
” Now living in Pakistan, fresh bureaucratic and documentation hurdles have yet again brought her schooling to a halt. “There are moments when I just feel completely defeated,” she admitted.
“If getting an education remains out of reach even here, then what was the purpose of coming at all?”
Neelab’s story reflects the lived experience of an entire generation of Afghan girls whose aspirations, futures, and rights have been suspended indefinitely by a government that has made their exclusion a matter of official policy.
Recommendations
Finn Right International calls upon the following actors to take immediate and concrete action:
The Government of Finland Together with the European Union:
- Increase sustained diplomatic pressure on the Taliban to reverse all restrictions on women and girls without preconditions
- Ensure that Afghan women are formally included in all international negotiations concerning Afghanistan’s political and humanitarian future
- Provide expanded humanitarian and educational support to Afghan refugees and displaced persons in neighboring countries
- Afghan Women
The United Nations and the International Community:
- Formally recognize the Taliban’s policies as gender apartheid under international human rights law
- Establish clear and enforceable accountability mechanisms for human rights violations perpetrated in Afghanistan
- Reject any international engagement with the Taliban that confers legitimacy without concrete and verifiable human rights concessions
- Afghan Women
All Nations:
- Refuse to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban government until the education ban and all gender-based restrictions are fully lifted
- Provide asylum protections and expanded educational opportunities to Afghan women and girls fleeing persecution and gender-based violence
- Afghan Women
Conclusion
Today is Day 1,739 of Afghan women and girls being excluded from public life. Nearly five years of systematic, state-enforced repression have produced a humanitarian and human rights catastrophe of staggering scale.
The world has not forgotten but it has failed to respond with the urgency and moral clarity this crisis demands.
Finn Right International stands in full solidarity with the women and girls of Afghanistan. Their cause is deeply intertwined with the worldwide pursuit of justice and human dignity.
Their voices deliberately silenced inside Afghanistan must be amplified, heard, and acted upon across the world.
“Education is not a privilege. It is a basic human right. A right Afghan Women continue to be denied. The world must not forget.”
Read how Afghan women are resisting Taliban oppression after 1,739 days of systematic exclusion
