NEW YORK: Afghan women face the world’s most severe human rights crisis under Taliban rule, with girls denied access to education and women stripped of fundamental freedoms, UN Women Deputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda warned at a United Nations meeting on women, peace and security.
Speaking at a meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Gumbonzvanda addressed the situation of women in conflict-affected areas, rising conflict-related sexual violence, women’s role in peace processes and the need for their participation in negotiations.
Gumbonzvanda said that Afghanistan today faces the most severe women’s rights crisis in the world, girls are being denied an education that could transform their lives.
She also warned that wars had become increasingly deadly for women and girls, stressing that the international community must not remain indifferent to rising civilian casualties and the suffering of women and girls.
In Afghanistan, women and girls have been deprived of their rights to education, employment, participation in public life and many other fundamental freedoms.
Over the past five years, Taliban restrictions have increasingly excluded them from various aspects of social, economic and political life.
In August 2026, UN Women said that in the past year alone, this exclusion of women and girls from education, employment, public life, justice systems and healthcare has only intensified, entrenching what remains the “world’s most severe women’s rights crisis”.
“The results are devastating,” the agency added, stressing that shorter life expectancy, higher risks of maternal death, child marriage and gender-based violence alongside the loss of education, work and freedom of movement have also triggered a mental health crisis.
Over the past five years of the Taliban regime, restrictive decrees targeting women and girls have institutionalised discrimination and stripped women of their fundamental rights, with profound consequences for their lives and communities, according to new UN Women data.
As of 2026, an estimated 2.4 million girls remain excluded from secondary education, with restrictions reversing two decades of progress in expanding access to education.
“Afghanistan is the only country in the world to formally prohibit access to education for girls and women beyond the primary level,” UNESCO said in a statement.
“The continued exclusion of girls and women from education constitutes a grave violation of their fundamental human right to learn and risks condemning Afghanistan to decades of lost potential, deepening poverty, and irreversible harm.”
Barred from secondary school and university and excluded from most paid work, women also face legal barriers to protect them against all forms of violence, UNESCO said.
“Women have been erased from public life,” the UN agency said. “As a new generation of girls grows without an education, their future becomes increasingly dark.”
