GENDER ALERT NO. 4 | Back to the 1990s? Women’s rights under the Taliban

Since August 2021, the Taliban have implemented a consistent and continuously expanding assault on women’s rights in Afghanistan. An assault which, with each passing day, decree after decree, sees the Taliban move closer to approximating their period of rule in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Decrees issued by the de facto authorities (DFA) since August 2021 have been rationalized as ‘temporary’, put in place for the ‘protection’ of women and ‘morality’, and accompanied by many unfulfilled promises regarding the formulation of plans and guidelines to remove decrees that impact the lives of Afghanistan’s women and girls.

This Gender Alert brings together publicly available gender data and analysis covering the period between August 2022 and February 2023.