Alison Davidian, Head of the UN Women’s Country Office in Afghanistan, delivered a briefing at the Gender Report from the United Nations in August 2024, where she discussed the worsening living conditions for women and girls due to strict laws imposed by the Taliban.

She had just returned from the north of Afghanistan and detailed how life there had changed since the Taliban regained control just over 3 years ago. “The first, most striking trend is the erasure of Afghan women from public life,” Davidian told the
UN. “When you take away fundamental rights, it impacts across all areas of life.”

Throughout her travels, Davidian took the time to speak with and survey numerous women in the area to get a true sense of the magnitude of their situation.
“I was married at sixteen. I couldn’t finish school. My hope was that my daughter’s life would be better than mine. Now I’m worried that her life is going to be worse,” one Afghan woman told Davidian.

It became apparent that the overwhelming majority of Afghan women were profoundly
concerned about the continuing decline of their quality of life. “Of the women that we surveyed, 98% said that they had limited or zero influence in decision making at the community level,” Davidian revealed.

As Davidian continued her travels in Afghanistan, she found that the impact of these restrictions was felt not only in Afghan communities but also in Afghan homes. She detailed this sobering reality in her briefing. “The percentage of women who feel like they have influence over decision-making at the household level has dropped almost 60% over the past year.

Three years ago, a woman in Afghanistan could technically decide to run for president. Now, she may not even be able to decide when to go and buy groceries,” she explained.
This report came shortly before the Taliban enacted a law forbidding women to sing, talk, or otherwise use their voices in public. This severe infringement on the freedom of women and girls has been recently defined as gender apartheid.

The term refers to the ways in which the Taliban work to systematically dehumanize females “in order to entrench power.” This has motivated the UN to fight to recognize this ongoing gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. Davidian warned the UN that the emotional and societal impacts of these restrictions will be felt in the near future and for generations to come.

“Our analysis shows that by 2026, the impact of leaving 1.1 million girls out of school and
100,000 women out of university correlates to an increase in early childbearing by 45% and an increase in maternal mortality by up to 50%.” However, Davidian concluded her briefing by offering solutions to how the world can come forward and help Afghan women and girls in the midst of this deepening humanitarian crisis.

Her ideas included providing long-term, sustainable funding for women’s organizations, designing programs that counter the erasure of women and girls by investing in their empowerment and leadership, and creating spaces for Afghan women to share with the world what they want in life.