Afghanistan Peace CampaignAAN Team
Afghanistan Analysts Network
In general, we try to include Afghan female experiences or views in all our reports, whatever the subject matter. However, we also publish reports dedicated to exploring the lives of women and girls, Emirate policy towards them and international responses. It is these reports which feature in this dossier. In putting it together, we have grouped reports into four categories:
- Reports investigating the experiences of Afghan women or girls in relation to a particular sector, for example, education, or an issue, for example, marrying off young daughters as a family’s response to economic desperation. These reports are grounded in interviews with those affected and the wider context. That could be historical comparisons, the economic or political dimensions, or translation and analysis of relevant laws.
- Reports about international responses to Emirate on policy on Afghan women and girls, for example, to the Emirate bans on women working for NGOs and the United Nations.
- Analysis of international legal instruments which activists and some foreign states want to see deployed against the Emirate, for example, the crime against humanity of gender persecution, or the proposed crime of gender apartheid.
- Reports from our ‘The Daily Hustle’ series which hone in on the experience of a particular woman or girl, for example, peddlers illegally trying to sell goods on the streets, the girl who when barred from secondary school and unimpressed by the religious teaching in madrassas, persuaded her father to set up their own madrassa, or the woman blocked from teaching by corruption under the Republic now running a successful tailoring business. Included, as well, are Daily Hustle reports about particular men with a relevant story to tell, for example, the poor labourer who, with his wife, decided to invite a distant relative, who was widowed, and her children to live with them.
Reports are listed within these four categories in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent.
Reports about the experiences of Afghan women and girls in a particular sector
Shaking the Sky: Women’s attempts to claim their inheritance rights under the Emirate
Few aspects of Islamic Emirate rule in Afghanistan have received as much criticism as the sweeping restrictions on the lives of women and girls. Yet in response to this condemnation, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) claims that it has actually improved women’s lives by enforcing women’s rights guaranteed by sharia. These include a woman’s right to inheritance, which is clearly specified in the Quran but rarely upheld in Afghanistan. Letty Phillips and Rama Mirzada, with input from the AAN team, have spoken to Afghan women and family members to explore whether the IEA’s efforts are encouraging women to claim their rights to inheritance in the face of long-held customs and widespread perceptions that even asking for this right is shameful.
Letty Phillips and Rama Mirzada
2 March 2025
In Pursuit of Virtue: Men’s views on the Islamic Emirate’s restrictions on women
Since taking power in August 2021, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has introduced increasingly severe restrictions on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls, that have reverberated across families and communities. The new rules have bolstered traditional male roles as women’s ‘gatekeepers’, determining what they can and cannot do. At the same time, these laws have also undermined men’s roles as supporters and facilitators of the ambitions of their female family members – in particular their daughters, but also wives and sisters. Overall, they have taken choices away from families, putting more power over Afghans’ personal lives into the hands of the state and its officials. In this report, Martine van Bijlert and the AAN team explore the effects of the restrictions on women as seen through the eyes of men. They explore how the Emirate’s rules have affected family dynamics and the lives of both men and women – not because it is often considered that men are more articulate or because the harm is more pronounced or important when also felt by men, but because the exclusion of women from public life affects everyone. It can disrupt families, fray communities and undermine both men and women.
Martine van Bijlert and AAN Team
26 January 2025
The ban on girls’ secondary education, together with other policies by the Islamic Emirate, have severely affected the lives of female teachers across Afghanistan. This is seldom truer than it is in Shughnan, a mountainous district in Badakhshan province where men and women have long specialised in teaching, working in their own district and beyond. AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini has sought to understand what’s happening in this fragment of Afghanistan, one of the lesser known of the country’s many faces.
Fabrizio Foschini
17 September 2024
A Pay Cut for Afghan Women Working in the Public Sector: “What can you do with 5,000 afghanis?”
The order by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), Hibatullah Akhundzada, to cut the salaries of women on the public payroll to just 5,000 afghanis (70 US dollars) a month was a bombshell. The Amir’s order was short and ambiguously worded, driving anxiety and speculation: did it apply to all women working in the public sector – bureaucrats, teachers, doctors, policewomen, prosecutors – who go to the office every day? Or only those the Emirate has barred from coming to work, but who, up until now, have been paid in full? Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour (with input from the AAN Team) have been hearing from women who are or were working in the public sector about the Amir’s order and how it has affected their lives and family finances. They told AAN about the difficulties they already had making ends meet and their concerns about how they would weather the financial pressure if their salaries were cut.
Jelena Bjelica and Roxanna Shapour
29 July 2024
What Do Young Afghan Women Do? A glimpse into everyday life after the bans
Since coming to power, the Taleban authorities have issued many edicts, decrees, declarations and directives limiting, restricting, suspending or banning basic freedoms for women and girls. Afghan women are no longer free to go to public parks, gyms and other public spaces and are banned from boarding planes and leaving the country on their own; they cannot attend university and secondary schools for girls have also closed their doors; national and international NGOs and the United Nations have been instructed not to employ Afghan women. The AAN team has spoken to eleven young women who were either working or studying before the bans to find out how they are living and surviving in this suddenly, highly-restrictive environment. AAN’s Jelena Bjelica summarises what they told us about their everyday lives since the Taleban came to power.
Jelena Bjelica and the AAN team
17 August 2023
Strangers in Our Own Country: How Afghan women cope with life under the Islamic Emirate
Sixteen months since its takeover of Afghanistan, the Emirate has imposed sweeping new restrictions on women’s lives, kicking female students out of universities and education centres, and banning women from working for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). The bans have come on top of the continuing closure of girls’ high schools, the banning of female civil servants from offices, curbs on women’s independent travel and what they can wear, and denying them access to parks, gyms and public bath houses. In this second report in a three-part series exploring how Afghan women’s lives have changed since the Taleban takeover, Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada consider the responses of Afghan women and their male relatives to the Taleban’s cataclysmic encroachment on their rights: How do you keep going when you have no hope?
Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada
28 December 2022
How Can a Bird Fly On Only One Wing? Afghan women speak about life under the Islamic Emirate
Fifteen months after the Taleban returned to power, Afghan women have seen their country and their lives dramatically alter, as jobs evaporated, restrictions were announced and families sank into poverty. To better understand how these changes affect the day-to-day lives of women and which changes are at the forefront of their minds, AAN conducted a series of interviews across the country. In this first of a two part series by Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada, women speak about the impact of Emirate policy that seeks to marginalise women and erase them from public life – the consequences for household economies, their dreams of education and personal and professional growth and the power dynamics within the family. Many have described how their independence has been undermined, along with their sense of self-worth and self-confidence, and how they are now struggling to maintain a sense of personhood.
Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada
22 November 2022
Living in a Collapsed Economy (4): The desperation and guilt of giving a young daughter in marriage
The collapse of the economy has led families across Afghanistan to make desperate decisions, including, for some, giving young daughters in marriage in exchange for a bride price. To gain more insight into this, AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon sought to interview fathers of young brides. He identified about a dozen such men, but most felt too ashamed and remorseful to talk about it. The four men who did speak described the pressures that had led to their decision, one they never imagined they would have to make, and the emotional turmoil that accompanied it. Unfortunately, for all four men, the difficult decision to marry off their daughters did not end up solving their problems (with input from Kate Clark).
Ali Mohammad Sabawoon
20 October 2022
“We need to breathe too”: Women across Afghanistan navigate the Taleban’s hijab ruling
It has been three weeks since the Taleban announced a new order, prescribing a strict dress code for women, that they should not leave the house without real need and if they do, should wear what is termed ‘sharia hijab’, with face covered entirely, or except for the eyes. The order made a woman’s ‘guardian’ – her father, husband or brother – legally responsible for policing her clothing, with the threat to punish him if she goes outside bare-faced. In this report, we hear from women about how they and their families have responded to the order and to what extent the new rules or guidelines have been enforced. Dress codes may seem less consequential than other changes, such as sending women workers home from government offices, hindering women’s travel or stopping older girls from going to school. Still, instructing women to cover their faces in public seems symbolic of the Emirate’s apparent desire to turn Afghan women into entirely invisible, private citizens again, argues Kate Clark, with input from Sayeda Rahimi.
Kate Clark and Sayeda Rahimi
1 June 2022
The Ban on Older Girls’ Education: Taleban conservatives ascendant and a leadership in disarray
The Taleban’s abrupt decision to keep girls’ secondary schools closed, despite promising for months that they would re-open, has caused distress to girls, parents and teachers alike. The Taleban’s justification was confused, with various officials giving different reasons for the closure, from lack of teachers to inappropriate school uniforms. Eventually, a formal announcement cited the need for a “comprehensive plan, in accordance with sharia and Afghan culture.” Guest author Ashley Jackson has been looking into what happened behind the scenes that lead to this policy reversal and argues that the ultimate cause may have had less to do with religion than the unpredictable nature of Taleban power politics.
Ashley Jackson
29 March 2022
Who Gets to Go to School? (3): Are Taleban attitudes starting to change from within?
In the last of our three reports on the Taleban and education, especially of girls, we turn to what seems to be a relatively new trend. Guest author Sabawoon Samim has been looking at views of girls’ education within the Taleban movement and finds it notable that some Taleban are now seeking out school and even university education for their sons and their daughters. He looks at how and why a significant membership of a group that banned girls’ education when it was last in power appears to be changing its attitude towards schooling. The series editor is Kate Clark.
Sabawoon Samim
7 February 2022
Who Gets to Go to School? (2) The Taleban and education through time
In trying to understand Taleban policy on state education, especially for girls, our first report heard from people around the country. They painted a picture of primary schools for boys and girls, and boys’ secondary schools having generally re-opened after the Taleban captured power on 15 August, but of girls’ secondary schools opening only very patchily. The Taleban have said they want to re-open schools for older girls when the environment can be made safe; many fear this could mean a de facto, ongoing closure. In this second report, AAN’s Kate Clark and guest author Said Reza Kazemi try to set current Taleban policy on schools in context: tracing the evolution of Taleban thinking on education historically may answer the question of why the Taleban have been so uneasy about girls going to school.
Said Reza Kazemi and Kate Clark
31 January 2022
Who Gets to Go to School? (1): What people told us about education since the Taleban took over
Taleban policy towards women and girls is one of the prisms through which the movement has been studied – and judged – ever since the Taleban first came to power in the mid-nineties. A touchstone for many Afghans and outside observers was whether, after capturing power nationally in August 2021, they would allow girls to go to school. Girls’ primary schools did indeed reopen, but schools for older girls have done so only patchily. This is far more than the Taleban allowed during their first Emirate when they banned girls’ schooling altogether, but also far less than many Afghans want and are used to. In a series of reports, the AAN team has been looking at Taleban practice and policy on schooling, especially for girls. In this first report, which draws on research from our ‘Living under the new Taleban government’ series, we try to get a clearer picture of where Afghan children are managing to go to school, and where they are not. (The series editor is Kate Clark.)
Kate Clark and the AAN team
26 January 2022
Reports about international responses to Emirate on policy on Afghan women and girls
A Ban, a Resolution and a Meeting: A look at the May 2023 meeting in Doha and the reactions to it
The 1-2 May 2023 gathering in Doha, hosted by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, brought together the representatives of 21 countries – the five permanent members of the Security Council, major donors and regional players, plus the European Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. They spent two days talking about how to engage with the Taleban, who have now been in power for 20 months, but are still unrecognised as Afghanistan’s government. The gathering took place in the shadow of the extension of an Islamic Emirate ban on women working from NGOs to the UN and a chaotic few weeks for the UN. AAN’s Roxanna Shapour and Kate Clark have been sifting through Guterres’ press statement and the various reactions to the gathering. They ask some questions about the gathering in Doha – and try to answer them.
Kate Clark and Roxanna Shapour
5 May 2023The May 2023 Doha meeting: How should the outside world deal with the Taleban?
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is due to host a two-day meeting on Afghanistan with foreign envoys, beginning tomorrow, 1 May 2023, in the capital of Qatar, Doha. The Taleban have not been invited. AAN understands from sources from invited countries that the idea for the meeting emerged from visits to Kabul in January by senior UN officials trying to negotiate with the Islamic Emirate on its ban on NGOs employing Afghan women. UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, in particular, came away with the sense that there needed to be a political plan for dealing with the Emirate. In recent days, however, the Doha meeting has become mired in controversy over her reported suggestion that the representatives would be looking into the question of recognising the Taleban’s government. This suggestion was swiftly and categorically denied by the UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson. The Taleban’s extension of their ban on employing Afghan women to the UN, made almost a month ago, has only complicated everything further, as AAN’s Kate Clark reports (with input from Roxanna Shapour), including appearing to throw the UN into disarray.
Kate Clark
30 April 2023
Anyone who lived in Afghanistan during the first Islamic Emirate will find the current stand-off between the Taleban and NGOs – and now the United Nations – over the issue of women working familiar. There is the same clashing of principles: the Emirate’s position that women must largely be kept inside the home to avoid the risk of social disorder and sin, and the humanitarians’ that the equitable and effective delivery of aid is impossible without female workers. The choices on the humanitarian side also feel familiar, and all unattractive: comply, boycott or fudge. AAN’s Kate Clark has spoken to people who were working in the humanitarian sector in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and who continue to follow Afghanistan, to get their insights into the similarities and differences – and what, possibly, might help.
Kate Clark
16 April 2023
Analysis of international legal instruments
In the spring of 2023, a campaign was launched to create a new international crime of gender apartheid. Campaigners argue that the oppression of women and girls is so total and severe in Afghanistan and Iran that it is akin to the systematic and hierarchical racist oppression practised by apartheid South Africa. Their hope is that gender apartheid will be included in a new Crimes Against Humanity Convention, which happens to be scheduled for negotiation in the coming years. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) shows no sign of moderating its policies towards Afghan women in the face of widespread global criticism, which it dismisses as foreign interference in domestic and religious matters. AAN’s Rachel Reid considers the campaign, the legal issues and how codification might happen.
Rachel Reid
29 November 2024
Afghanistan has been warned that its violations of women’s rights will trigger a referral to the United Nation’s highest court – the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – unless it changes its policies. The initiative, taken by Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands and supported by 22 other states, centres on alleged violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to which Afghanistan is a signatory. According to the procedures of the court, the Afghan government is offered a chance to resolve the dispute, failing which, the ICJ will take up the case. A spokesman for the Islamic Emirate immediately dismissed the allegations. While the court lacks enforcement power, it is not without teeth and a judgement against the IEA could lead to additional sanctions against the Emirate, as well as political pressure on those actors inclined towards normalisation. Rachel Reid provides an overview of the process, its potential impact and pitfalls.
Rachel Reid
3 October 2024
Gender Persecution in Afghanistan: Could it come under the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation?
Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taleban have enacted successive laws and orders which apply to women and girls, but not to men and boys. Earlier this month, United Nations experts reported their assessment that these measures violated women and girls’ rights to education, work, freedom of movement, health, bodily autonomy and decision-making, peaceful assembly and association, and access to justice and amounted to ‘gender persecution’. One of the experts has also asked the International Criminal Court to consider whether the crime against humanity of gender persecution was taking place in Afghanistan. In this Q&A, Ehsan Qaane unpacks the term as it exists in international law, and in that light, analyses whether the court might consider Taleban restrictions on women as amounting to gender prosecution and whether an investigation could lie within its mandate.
Ehsan Qaane
26 May 2023
Reports from our ‘The Daily Hustle’ series
The Daily Hustle: A home school for girls is shut down
Today’s Daily Hustle features a young woman who we last heard from in June 2023 when she was running a home school for girls in her village. Now, a year and half later, she has been ordered to close it. Even before the fall of the Islamic Republic, many Afghan girls had no access to education – whether because of conflict or local conservative mores, a lack of female teachers, or because functioning schools did not exist. After the Republic fell, communities in these areas were hopeful that schools might open – or reopen – now the conflict was over. But for older girls across Afghanistan, this was not to be. One of the first things the Taleban did after they took power was to ban older girls from education. Many families in rural Afghanistan have also struggled to get even their younger daughters an education because no schools were ever built in their areas. However, they may be local NGO-supported home-based or community-based schools. In 2023, we spoke to one young Afghan woman who had set up such a school. Hamid Pakteen spoke to her recently and she had bad news.
Hamid Pakteen and Roxanna Shapour
16 February 2025
In this instalment of The Daily Hustle, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from a woman who did most of her growing up under the first Islamic Emirate which banned girls of all ages from going to school. She came late to education, but strove to be a good student and managed to graduate from high school and secure a teaching qualification. Then, administrative corruption and bureaucracy under the Islamic Republic blocked her path into teaching and she had to put her dream of being an educator on hold. Instead, she began a tailoring business, working from home, in order to support her family. It is a reminder that barriers to Afghan women and girls fulfilling their dreams predate the current government’s restrictions on their work, education and movement.
Rohullah Sorush and Roxanna Shapour
7 December 2024
The Daily Hustle: The day labourer and his wife who took in a widow and her six children
Some tales of generosity and compassion, of tragedy, heartache and life-changing decisions, span the generations. One such story is Ruzi Khan’s, a day labourer from Helmand province, who has opened his home to a destitute widow and her six young children. While the widow is his distant cousin, her late husband was the son of a Hindu boy who moved to Khan’s village in the 1960s with his mother and step-father and later converted to Islam. Ruzi Khan has spoken to AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon for the latest instalment of The Daily Hustle, and tells how, faced with a family in distress, he and his wife, while struggling to feed their own children, decided they could not stand idly by in the face of the suffering of others.
Ali Mohammad Sabawoon and Roxanna Shapour
10 November 2024
The Daily Hustle: A young women’s journey home for the summer holidays
For decades, Afghanistan has had a huge diaspora who, if they can, travel home to visit family and keep connections to their homeland alive. Since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, many Afghan women are apprehensive about returning to the country for a visit. They worry about the Emirate’s restrictions on women and how this might affect their experience of return. In this instalment of the Daily Hustle, a medical student tells Rama Mirzad about returning to Kabul for a summer visit for the first time since she left Afghanistan to study six years ago. She tells us of homesickness, the joy of seeing her family and why in the end she has resolved not to return again to Afghanistan.
Rama Mirzada and Roxanna Shapour
13 October 2024
The Daily Hustle: Going on a picnic with your family, if you’re a girl
Going on a picnic and spending time with your family, enjoying Afghanistan’s natural beauty, is a favourite pastime for Afghan families, especially in springtime. However, since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) has imposed many restrictions on women and older girls, public parks in the country have largely become no-go areas for them. AAN has been hearing from one girl about the hoops she had to jump through to get permission from her father to go on a family picnic and how the simple pleasures of life, like spending the day with your family in northern Afghanistan’s lush green hills, are not so simple anymore.
Rama Mirzada and Roxanna Shapour
23 July 2024
The Daily Hustle: Why one Afghan girl decided to open her own madrasa
After the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan closed girls’ high schools, thousands of older Afghan girls were left behind from education. With not much to do except help with the household chores, many families decided to enrol their girls in a madrasa so that they could pursue their religious education. Many older girls, who had already had extensive religious education in their high schools, found the quality of madrasa instruction fell short of the mark. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon has spoken to one girl who decided to take matters into her own hands and, with her father’s support, establish a madrasa.
Ali Mohammad Sabawoon and Roxanna Shapour
2 June 2024
The Daily Hustle: “Helping the dreams of girls come true”
After the Islamic Emirate banned older girls from education, many girls found alternative avenues to continue their studies, find intellectual stimulation – and even, as this Daily Hustle found out, make a living in the private education sector. AAN’s Rohullah Sorush hears from one young Afghan woman about how, even in the face of overwhelming setbacks and personal tragedy, she has managed not only to succeed in her learning endeavours but to thrive with the love and support of her family.
Rohullah Sorush and Roxanna Shapour
24 November 2023
The Daily Hustle: Women take to street peddling to feed their families
After the Taleban came to power in August 2021, the flow of international funds into the country that helped prop up the economy declined precipitously, and a significant number of people lost their jobs. Women, facing new legal restrictions on work from the Islamic Emirate, have been hit disproportionately hard by unemployment. With few options available to them, an increasing number of women, especially widows and single heads of household, have taken to selling goods from handcarts in an effort to earn a living. AAN’s Sayed Asadullah Sadat has heard from three female street vendors. Their arresting accounts of how the lack of paid work or forced unemployment, driven by the Emirate’s mounting restrictions on women working outside the home, have pushed them into joining the ranks of their male counterparts as street pedlars in Kabul.
Sayed Asadullah Sadat and Roxanna Shapour
22 July 2023
The Daily Hustle: Running a home school for girls
The Taleban made their move against education for older girls about a month after they took over Afghanistan when they ordered secondary schools for boys to re-open, but made no mention of girls. Since then, there have been a few instances of false hope, notably in March 2022 when the government reneged on its promise to reopen girls’ secondary schools. Yet even before the fall of the Republic, many Afghan girls had no access to education – because of conflict in their area, or local conservative mores and a lack of female teachers, or because functioning schools did not exist. In this latest instalment of the Daily Hustle, we hear from one young Afghan woman about how elders in her community managed to open home schools for girls and appointed her as a teacher. That was five years ago. Now, there are rumours that the Taleban will close her school down.
Roxanna Shapour
30 June 2023
The Daily Hustle: Being a widow in Afghanistan
The word most often used by Afghans to refer to widows is bisarparast (without someone to take care of you). In Afghanistan’s highly patriarchal society, where men are expected to be the breadwinners and opportunities for women to work are relatively few, being a widow is likely to be socially and economically precarious. They are often stigmatised, passed over for jobs and considered burdens on their families. One of the legacies of almost a half-century of war in Afghanistan it the high number of widows – there are no official statistics, but news reports put their number at two million or more. The position of widows without sons is even more insecure, especially since the Taleban takeover has intensified the requirement for women to have a close male relative to act as a chaperone (mahram) and legal guardian. The subject of our latest Daily Hustle is such a widow, an older woman who never had children and who has learned to live on her wits to survive widowhood, economic upheaval and her marginal status in society.
Roxanna Shapour
4 June 2023
The Daily Hustle: How Afghan women working for NGOs are coping with the Taleban ban
Afghan women who were studying at university or working for NGOs have now had a few weeks to take in the implications of two decrees issued by Taleban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada which denied them a university education and banned them from working for NGOs. The announcements had come as successive blows to women who had already seen their rights and freedoms rolled back by the Emirate since it came to power in August 2021. For the latest instalment of The Daily Hustle, our series that features individual accounts about one aspect of daily life in Afghanistan, we hear from two women who used to go out to work, but since the latest decree, are no longer going.
Roxanna Shapour
26 January 2023
The Daily Hustle: One young woman’s journey to an English course in Kabul
For many Afghans the first year of Taleban rule was marked by uncertainty and anxiety over the country’s sudden change in fortunes. Virtually every area of daily life, from banking and shopping to travelling around the country to marriage celebrations has been affected. We wanted to find out from a variety of people how an aspect of their daily life had changed and how they were negotiating this changed landscape. In this first instalment of a new series, AAN guest author, Rama Mirzada, writes about what it has been like for her, a young woman, to overcome her fears, and the anxiety of her family, at her leaving the house to enrol in an English language course.
Rama Mirzada
15 October 2022