UN Urges Continued Support For Afghan Women As Taliban Restrictions Tighten

UN News

A staff member with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) speaks with displaced women in the eastern province of Nangahar in Afghanistan.

The United Nations on Friday urged donors not to reduce funding for women-focused programmes in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, warning that further cuts would deepen the suffering of women in a country where their rights and living conditions are already among the worst in the world.

Despite ever-deteriorating conditions for women five years after the Taliban's return to power, funding shortfalls mean more than half of 74 women's organizations surveyed in April are likely to have to suspend operations or close in the next year, just when they are most needed, Susan Ferguson, UN Women's special representative in Afghanistan, told reporters.

Ferguson said the Taliban had imposed more than 100 decrees restricting women's rights since returning to power, affecting nearly every aspect ⁠of their daily lives, from education and employment to freedom of movement, healthcare and access to justice.

Girls are barred from secondary schools and universities, and more than half of 3,200 women surveyed by U.N. Women said they now left their homes only once or twice a month. In a sign of their deepening isolation, seven in 10 women described their mental health as bad or very bad, she said.

"I urge all governments and other international donors to continue investing in Afghan women and girls, to increase, not cut, their foreign aid," said Ferguson, stressing that Afghanistan was facing the world's most severe women's rights crisis.

She said the U.N.'s $1.7 billion humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan was only 25% funded and nearly three-quarters of the women's organizations had experienced funding cuts ‌in ⁠2025, while about two-thirds reported that they had six months or less of operational funding remaining.

"Five years into this crisis, this is the moment to deepen our commitment to Afghan women, not to retreat from it."

The Taliban argue they respect women's rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture.

Ferguson spoke after a group of 56 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Japan, the United States and the ⁠United Arab Emirates, issued a joint statement at the UN renewing calls on the Taliban to reverse restrictions on women and girls, saying its "systematic repression of women and girls has become a defining feature of the current system."

The countries said Afghanistan remained the only country in the ⁠world where girls were banned from secondary and higher education and accused the Taliban of continuing to strip women and girls of their "rights, dignity and agency" through an "ever-expanding web of discriminatory decrees."

Absent from the list announced by Denmark, which coordinated the statement, ⁠were Russia and China, as well as Afghanistan's neighbours Pakistan and Iran, the five Central Asian states and India.

Türkiye and most other Middle Eastern countries, apart from Lebanon, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, also did not sign, underscoring divisions within the 193-member United Nations over how to engage with the Taliban.

Source: Reuters



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