Erased from the Public Square: Women\\'s Political Participation under Taliban Rule (2021–2025): A Human Rights Law Perspective

Abstract

Since the Taliban\'s return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has witnessed the systematic dismantlement of women\'s political rights, a regression unprecedented in the post-Cold War era. This article examines the Taliban\'s policies on women\'s political participation through the prism of international human rights law, with particular focus on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Analysing over one hundred Taliban edicts issued between 2021 and 2025, alongside the 2024 Law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (PVPV), the article argues that the systematic exclusion of women from political life constitutes not merely a series of discrete human rights violations but an institutionalised regime of gender-based oppression meeting the legal threshold of gender persecution as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. It further examines the doctrine of gender apartheid, emerging accountability mechanisms, including International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants issued in July 2025, and inter-State proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and critically evaluates the structural limitations of existing international legal frameworks in addressing non-compliant de facto authorities. The article concludes with recommendations for strengthening accountability and legal protection for Afghan women.

Introduction

The text examines the systematic exclusion of women from political life in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover in 2021, and evaluates it within the framework of international human rights law.

It explains that after the collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021, women—who had previously held about 27% of parliamentary seats—were rapidly removed from all public and political roles. Between 2021 and 2025, the Taliban issued over 100 decrees restricting women’s rights, culminating in the 2024 Law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which legally entrenched severe gender-based restrictions. UN reports confirm that none of these restrictions have been reversed, marking a complete institutional rollback of women’s rights.

The text situates this situation within international law, highlighting instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ICCPR, CEDAW, and UN Security Council Resolution 1325, all of which guarantee women’s equal right to political participation. It argues that Afghanistan is legally bound by these commitments, and that Taliban rule violates both treaty obligations and emerging customary international law on gender equality.

It further explains how the Taliban dismantled institutions that supported women’s participation, including the constitution, human rights bodies, and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Women were removed from civil service, politics, and public employment, while mobility, speech, and education were heavily restricted through successive edicts.

The 2024 PVPV law is presented as a key turning point, formally codifying discrimination by restricting women’s dress, movement, voice, and public presence. This law, along with earlier decrees, creates what scholars describe as an institutionalised system of gender apartheid.

Conclusion

The Taliban\'s governance of Afghanistan since August 2021 represents one of the most comprehensively documented instances of systematic gender-based political exclusion in the post-war international order. Over one hundred edicts, culminating in the 2024 PVPV Law and the 2026 criminal code, have constructed an architecture of institutionalised gender discrimination that meets the legal threshold for gender persecution as a crime against humanity, and that many credible legal authorities characterise as gender apartheid. International human rights law — through CEDAW, the ICCPR, the Rome Statute, and UNSCR 1325 — provides a normative framework of considerable sophistication and clarity. Afghanistan\'s own prior commitments to these instruments are not extinguished by the Taliban\'s seizure of power. The gap is not normative but operational: the mechanisms for enforcing these norms against non-compliant de facto authorities are structurally underdeveloped, politically contested, and practically constrained. The ICC arrest warrants of July 2025, the inter-state CEDAW proceedings before the ICJ, the CEDAW Committee\'s unprecedented review without state cooperation, and the establishment of the IIM-A collectively represent the most ambitious suite of accountability measures the international community has assembled against a gender-discriminatory regime. Whether these mechanisms will achieve results — whether Afghan women will, in their lifetimes, recover their right to participate in the political life of their country — depends upon sustained political will that has thus far been uneven and insufficient. The stakes extend beyond Afghanistan. The response of the international community to the Taliban\'s gender policies will shape the expectations and conduct of authoritarian actors worldwide, and will determine whether the progressive development of international human rights law on gender equality continues or stalls. As the Afghan women who continue to resist at enormous personal cost have repeatedly insisted: they are not asking for rescue, but for the enforcement of rights that international law already recognises as theirs.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Aastha Pandey . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.