There is growing international recognition that impunity for grave human rights violations in Afghanistan cannot be tolerated. In September, I briefed the United Nations Security Council, carrying with me the voices of thousands of Afghan women whose hopes and futures have been extinguished in silence. What I told the Council remains true today: Afghanistan faces one of the most profound human rights, humanitarian, environmental, and political crises of our time, one that will not remain confined within its borders. Since I addressed the U.N., the Human Rights Council has taken a historic step by establishing the Independent Accountability Mechanism for Afghanistan, a measure I emphasized as essential during my address.
U.N. Security Council briefings are not ceremonial. The Council defines the mandate of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), renews sanctions, and shapes engagement with Afghanistan. In a world saturated with crises, the attention of the Security Council is itself a lifeline. It affirms that the erasure of women is not an “internal affair” but a threat to international peace and security.
In my remarks at the U.N., I urged the Security Council to move from expressions of concern to concrete commitments. The situation is no longer in dispute; even the Taliban no longer deny their repression. The question is what the international community will do. The credibility of the U.N. human rights framework depends on whether it can confront one of the world’s most systematic experiments in gender oppression with more than statements of alarm.
With Women Silenced, Afghanistan Faces Precipitous Decline
I studied law in Afghanistan and completed a master’s degree in public international law in the United Kingdom, at a time when Afghan women could still shape their own destinies. I went on to serve with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and later in the Afghan government, including as Deputy Governor of Kabul and as Human Rights Director for the National Directorate of Security (NDS), an independent human rights monitoring body. On August 15, 2021, while in my office, I received a call warning me that the Taliban had entered Kabul. The NDS detention facility where hundreds of Taliban members, Daish (ISIS) and ISIS-K and Al-Qaeda members were detained was in the same building, and as the only woman in the Directorate’s leadership, I was told I could be among the first targets. In that moment, I understood that the Taliban’s return would dismantle decades of progress and erase the fragile freedoms Afghan women had fought to secure.
After the Taliban introduced their ban on girls’ education, a young woman from Kandahar, living under Taliban rule, told me, “By now, I should have completed my master’s degree and become a law professor. Instead, for four long years, I have lived in uncertainty, unable to decide my own future.” Her words captured the trauma of a generation deliberately erased. The denial of education and employment is not a policy failure; it is an architecture of control. The systematic exclusion of half the population from public life constitutes the crime against humanity of gender persecution.
The Taliban’s exclusion of women from economic and social life has crippled Afghanistan’s economy (as shown in World Bank data), intensified food insecurity, and deepened national fragility. Women are not merely victims of this collapse; they are its missing agents of recovery. According to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), restricting women’s employment is projected to reduce Afghanistan’s GDP by up to 5 percent annually. The UNDP Socio-Economic Review 2024 further estimates that women’s exclusion could result in a $920 million loss between 2024 and 2026. The World Bank Gender Data Portal reports that female labor-force participation has fallen to about 5 percent in 2024, compared with nearly 70 percent for men, while GDP per capita declined from $621 in 2020 to US $370 in 2023. Meanwhile, U.N. Women notes that in the average Afghan household, only 0.15 economically active adults per household are women, illustrating the scale of gendered exclusion. These figures show how the Taliban’s gender policies have accelerated economic decline, weakened social resilience, and transformed what began as a humanitarian crisis into an existential threat to regional stability.
Afghanistan’s 29 million people, including more than 6 million women and girls in acute need, cannot survive without aid, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Global Humanitarian Overview 2024. Yet humanitarian principles are eroded by Taliban interference, restrictions on female staff, and diversion of resources, as shown in Human Rights Watch’s February 2024 report. Aid must remain unconditional in purpose, saving lives, but conditional in accountability. Since 2021, humanitarian operations in Afghanistan have faced increasing interference, including restrictions on female staff and diversion of aid to terrorist groups. The Council should reaffirm that assistance must reach people directly, guarantee independent access for U.N. agencies and NGOs, and establish an internationally appointed monitoring body to verify and report diversion. Persistent weaknesses in oversight and risk assessment have made aid operations vulnerable to manipulation, underscoring the need for stronger field monitoring and independent verification.
The resumption of U.S. humanitarian funding to Afghanistan would help reduce irregular migration and refugee flows, curb opium cultivation, and prevent the entrenchment of an economy built on conflict and illicit trade. It would also help deny terrorist groups the safe havens they could otherwise exploit to threaten U.S. and allied security interests. Administration and monitoring costs should remain within the existing aid ceiling to maximize direct support to Afghan civilians. In addition to the human rights accountability mechanism, a body to monitor the equal access of humanitarian aid to women and girls could be mandated by the Security Council and implemented through OCHA or an independent expert panel appointed by the secretary-general. Drawing lessons from monitoring frameworks in Syria (Resolution 2165 (2014)) and Yemen (UNVIM, 2016), Afghanistan’s mechanism should combine independent field verification with sustained political backing to ensure that aid reaches those who need it most. Without accountability, aid risks legitimizing repression. Without aid, millions will die.
UNAMA remains the only institutional bridge between Afghanistan and the world. Its mandate must not merely be renewed, as in Resolution 2777 (2025), but expanded to help find a political solution to the ongoing human rights, humanitarian, and environmental crises. Although the tenure of Roza Otunbayeva as head of UNAMA concluded in September, the Secretary-General has yet to appoint her successor despite the continuing political and human rights emergency.
The Independent Assessment of Afghanistan (2023) called for a structured roadmap to reintegrate Afghanistan through a phased, performance-based process, envisioning reciprocal commitments: measurable progress by the de facto authorities on women’s rights, inclusive governance, counterterrorism, and narcotics control, matched by gradual international normalization. The Doha Process was established to facilitate this engagement, serving as a U.N.-led platform for coordination with the Taliban on economic, humanitarian, and governance issues. However, while it provides space for dialogue, it has not yet produced a framework for accountability or representation. Reintegration must therefore be rooted not in diplomatic symbolism but in verifiable progress aligned with the U.N. Charter and international human rights obligations.
There Must Be a Cost for Continued Repression
All forms of engagement—political, economic, or humanitarian—must be guided by clear, verifiable benchmarks. Progress in areas such as girls’ education and women’s employment depends on decisions only the Taliban can make. The Council should link engagement by U.N. member States to measurable commitments by the Taliban to reopen secondary and tertiary education for girls, restore women’s right to work, and permit unfettered access to U.N. human rights monitors, including the Special Rapporteur.
These are minimal conditions for legitimacy. If the Taliban refuse them, they should not receive eased sanctions or unfrozen assets. The Security Council Sanctions Committee must link travel exemptions and benefits to measurable progress. Recent debates on easing sanctions against the Taliban, such as the Norwegian Refugee Council’s analysis, highlight the dilemma between alleviating civilian suffering and risking normalization of a regime that continues to violate fundamental rights. If the Taliban refuses to meet these benchmarks, the Security Council should expand sanctions on Taliban leaders, reinstate travel bans, and reduce diplomatic engagement, while redirecting all assistance through independent humanitarian and civil society channels that directly reach the Afghan people. No further political engagement should proceed until verifiable progress is made on women’s rights and inclusive governance.
History will remember that while Afghanistan was enduring one of its most difficult trials, neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan, as well as some of its international partners, involuntarily returned millions of Afghans. In 2025 alone, Iran and Pakistan have forced over 2.6 million Afghans to return, exposing them to deprivation, imprisonment, and even killing of former members of the Afghan National Security Forces. Sending back women and girls to Afghanistan subjects them to unimaginable levels of targeted persecution. As recent reporting highlights, even eligible asylum seekers awaiting resettlement under existing international programs have faced uncertainty and forced deportations.
Although the Council cannot legislate national asylum systems, it can and must urge all States to uphold their obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture. The Council can also request that the Secretary-General report on patterns of forced returns and consider establishing regional humanitarian hubs outside Kabul to ensure aid reaches returnees without passing through politicized or gender-exclusive gatekeepers.
Climate stress compounds every Afghan crisis. Recurrent droughts, flash floods, and glacier melt have devastated harvests and water systems, driving hunger and displacement. Women bear the heaviest burdens, managing households amid scarcity while also facing early marriage and maternal mortality. Decades of conflict have left explosive remnants contaminating soil and water. Following the September earthquake in Kunar and the November earthquake in northern Afghanistan, unexploded ordnance blocked relief teams, while Taliban restrictions on female responders cost lives. The intersection of climate damage, contamination, and gender apartheid remains largely unaddressed by international response.
As I said during my speech at the U.N., the good news is that Security Council member States can play a vital role in addressing these crises, but it is also vital to fund women-led civil society and media organizations, support independent Afghan media via protected trust funds, and broaden resettlement pathways for women human-rights defenders and journalists. These measures would preserve the last fragments of Afghan civil society capable of rebuilding when the opportunity arises.
Finally, a moral note: the decisions made today are not votes on abstract policy: they are votes on human futures. We have been told that the world wants to help and yet will not demand the conditions that would protect the dignity of Afghan women and girls. Help without justice is complicity. Engagement without rights is appeasement. We will accept assistance that saves us, but we will not accept assistance that buries us.
