Five Years On, Afghan Women Remain Erased From Public Life

Five years after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan, a UN assessment finds Afghan women systematically excluded from secondary and university education, formal employment, healthcare access, and public space. The UN characterises the situation as 'gender apartheid' — a term with legal implications under international human rights frameworks. Girls above primary school age are barred from classrooms in most provinces; women cannot travel without a male guardian or access most medical facilities staffed by male practitioners.

The structural trap is this: international aid, which funded roughly 75% of Afghanistan's pre-2021 public budget, remains largely suspended or severely restricted precisely because donors cannot justify financing a government that explicitly eliminates half the population from economic and civic life. But suspension of aid also compounds the humanitarian emergency that women face — collapsing the healthcare system, deepening food insecurity, and leaving no functioning state to push back against Taliban policy. The obvious lever (conditioned aid) is also the bluntest instrument in a country where the population bears the cost of international pressure on the government.

Watch whether the 'gender apartheid' framing gains traction in international legal bodies — the International Court of Justice or the ICC — beyond rhetorical use. If it reaches a formal legal threshold, it would create binding obligations on signatory states and potentially open new accountability pathways that sanctions alone have not achieved.