GoKawiilGirls return home from school in Fayzabad, Afghanistan. Girls are allowed to go to primary school until they are 11 or 12 years old, but are barred from secondary school and university.Credit: Omer Abrar/AFP/Getty
This week marks five years since the Taliban marched back into Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. It is nearly four years since girls and women were banned from secondary and higher education and from undertaking most forms of employment. Women are barred from public-sector appointments. They are also, it seems, being forgotten by the international community.
Why aren’t there talks with the Taliban about getting women and girls back into education?
“It’s like we’re at a crossroads; all the paths are dark. One path is concrete, another is muddy, and one has pitfalls. We can’t discern the paths; all of them are dark and uncertain.” This is how one female Afghan academic described her predicament to researchers (S. Shahir et al. Womens Stud. Int. Forum 113, 103193; 2025).
When the Taliban took over running the country in August 2021, the movement’s leadership gave a verbal commitment that girls and women would not be excluded from education and workplaces, as happened during their previous rule between 1996 and 2001. But as we reported previously, evidence emerged quickly that the Taliban were not keeping their promises (Nature 633, 494; 2024). Now, the trend is unmistakable: conditions for girls and women have worsened over the past five years. Moreover, as countries establish links with the Taliban, they are doing so without pushing for progress on human rights. It is shameful that half the country’s population — more than 20 million women and girls — has been ignored by the international community.
Since 2021, around 2.4 million girls have been excluded from secondary education and more than 100,000 young women have been unable to access higher education, according to data from the United Nations’ cultural organization UNESCO. Opportunities for boys and men are shrinking, too: enrolment in higher education has dropped by 40% between 2019 and 2024 (see go.nature.com/4hs2a3s). Some women have been able to work in limited ways, by providing essential services such as health care to women and delivering humanitarian assistance to some of the country’s 14 million people who are facing acute hunger. But these women are doing so at great risk to themselves and their families.
The Taliban said women could study — three years on they still can’t
Restrictions on girls and women continue to mount. Last September, the Taliban stopped women from entering UN facilities. And in May, one of the last health-care training and education centres that women could access — the Baran Health Sciences Institute in Bamiyan — closed.
Meanwhile, women are being erased from the scholarly record. Last August, the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education issued two directives. One bans universities from teaching 680 books written by women or by authors from Western countries or Iran. The other bans courses in subjects such as gender studies, women’s rights, the history of religion and democracy. Moreover, there is no longer a statutory minimum age for marriage — effectively legalizing child marriage — after a law change in May.
You would expect that these developments would prompt the international community to take urgent steps to support Afghan girls and women. Yet, key countries are failing to help. For decades, Pakistan and Iran have been an important destination for Afghan women seeking opportunities abroad. No more. This year alone, both countries have sent one million people back to Afghanistan.
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