In 2025, the Taliban deepened their repression by intensifying restrictions on the rights of women and girls and adding new regulations to curb media freedom.

Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis worsened. Large-scale forced returns from Iran and Pakistan coupled with deep cuts to foreign aid left millions without adequate food, shelter, and health care.

Women’s and Girls’ Rights

Taliban authorities maintained a ban on secondary and higher education for girls and women. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice imposed further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression, by banning women’s voices from being heard in reciting the Quran or singing in public. Women who defied the rules faced abuse and arbitrary detention.

In September, Taliban officials prohibited universities from teaching books written by women. Taliban officials imposed severe restrictions on women and girls’ freedom of movement and access to public spaces. The law stipulates strict rules on dress and behavior, especially for women and girls. Local enforcement committees carried out raids on workplaces to ensure the segregation of women and men, monitored public spaces, and established checkpoints to inspect mobile phones and question vehicle occupants and pedestrians.

Enforcement of the requirement for women to be accompanied by a male relative further restricted women’s liberty and impeded their access to employment and health care, and blocked them from using public transport. Taliban officials detained people for alleged infractions, such as wearing inappropriate hijabs or failing to maintain separate facilities for women and men in work environments.

Taliban officials curtailed women’s right to work. They shut down beauty salons run by women in their homes and a women’s radio station in February. They restricted women’s participation in the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Corporal Punishment, Extrajudicial Killings, Enforced Disappearances, and Torture

The Taliban carried out public executions of at least four men in Nimruz, Badghis, and Farah provinces. In its first and second quarterly reports, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) documented 414 cases (327 men, 83 women, three girls, and one boy) of corporal punishment involving public lashings, mostly on accusations of “moral” crimes like adultery.

UNAMA also documented 31 cases of arbitrary arrest and detention and eight allegations of torture and ill-treatment of former government officials and former security force members, and at least six killings of former Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) members.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

As was the case under Afghanistan’s former penal code, the Taliban Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law criminalizes same-sex relations. LGBT people in Afghanistan continued to face systematic persecution in 2025, with Taliban officials targeting them for arrest and abuse. Four men convicted of same-sex relations in February were punished with lashing and prison terms ranging from one to five years.

Attacks on the Media, Civil Society, and Minority Communities

The Taliban continued to curtail freedom of expression and the media, arbitrarily detaining and torturing journalists and other critics. In September, they banned live broadcasts of political shows and limited media interviews to individuals from a pre-approved list. They prohibited reporting on human rights abuses and security incidents, and also increased restrictions on social media and poetry.

 Local media outlets are required to comply with strict regulations limiting content, including prohibitions on images of people and vague rules against publishing anything against Islam. Activists, academics, writers, and artists are at serious risk of arbitrary detention and ill-treatment. In August, the Taliban leader banned poetry readings encouraging friendships between boys and girls or critical of Taliban decisions. In September, the authorities carried out a 48-hour shutdown of fiber optic internet and all telecommunications across Afghanistan.

In June, Taliban authorities in Faryab province briefly detained a large number of Uzbeks following protests over the authorities’ handling of an earlier altercation between Uzbeks and local Pashtun villagers. On July 27, the Taliban forcibly evicted 25 Hazara families (around 200 people, including women, children, and older persons) from Rashk village in Bamiyan province. Local authorities in Bamiyan banned Shia religious books and a Shia gathering in September. According to the UN, Taliban authorities used physical abuse and death threats to compel some 50 members of the Ismaili community in Badakhshan to convert to the Sunni faith.

Economic and Humanitarian Crises

Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis grew more acute in 2025, as the US enacted massive cuts to foreign aid. By year’s end, more than 22 million people were experiencing food insecurity, with women and girls disproportionately affected. Declining foreign donor funding, the cumulative impact of Taliban restrictions, and large-scale forced returns from Iran and Pakistan left millions of Afghans—including over three million acutely malnourished children—in need of humanitarian aid and assistance. As of September, the UN’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan for Afghanistan was less than 20 percent funded.

 The loss of foreign assistance has devastated Afghanistan’s healthcare system, exacerbating the health harms of malnutrition. In 2025, more than 400 health facilities closed because of a lack of funds. Cuts to aid have also jeopardized critical online education and scholarship programs for girls and women.

Afghan Refugees

In 2025 Afghans were one of the world’s largest refugee populations, numbering 5.8 million. In 2025, Iran and Pakistan alone expelled more than two million, including thousands of Afghans born outside the country who had never lived in Afghanistan. As of July, UN experts stated that over 1.5 million Afghans had been deported from Iran.

 Among those forced back to Afghanistan have been Afghan activists and journalists who fled to Iran and Pakistan after the Taliban takeover who may be at risk of reprisal because of their work. Former security officers who were deported to Afghanistan have faced arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, and other ill-treatment.

In July, Germany deported 81 Afghans to Kabul, its second such flight since the Taliban takeover, in what the government said would be continuing deportations. In July, the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Afghan nationals claiming that economic and security conditions had improved inside the country, and no threat was posed to returning nationals. The US also deported some Afghan nationals to Panama.

Resettlement schemes for Afghan refugees in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, and other countries stalled, leaving thousands of Afghans who fled the Taliban in limbo in Iran, Pakistan, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries where they were at risk of deportation.

Attacks on Civilians

Cross-border attacks between Taliban forces and Pakistani security forces in February caused civilian casualties, including at least one death. In March and February, Pakistani airstrikes killed 10 civilians, including five children, in Paktika province.

The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP, the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan) claimed responsibility for several attacks that killed civilians, including a suicide bombing at a bank in Kunduz that killed at least four civilians.

Justice and Accountability

In October, the UN Human Rights Council adopted by consensus an EU-led resolution establishing a comprehensive independent international accountability mechanism for Afghanistan. The new mechanism has a mandate to investigate and collect, preserve, and analyze evidence of past and ongoing grave violations and abuses in the country, identify those responsible, and support future prosecutions. The move came after years of campaigning by Afghan and international rights groups for the creation of such a mechanism.

The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan presented two reports to the UN Human Rights Council, one on access to justice and protection for women and girls, and one on the Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Both reports called for an end impunity and measures to ensure accountability for international crimes committed in Afghanistan.

In July, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the senior Taliban leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging them with crimes against humanity for persecution of women and girls and of LGBT people.

In May, Australia established an Afghanistan Inquiry Compensation Scheme to determine compensation due to family members of victims of unlawful killings by Australian special forces in Afghanistan and to victims of unlawful assault or property damage by such forces. In August, an Australian court confirmed a former soldier could stand trial for the war crime of murder. He is accused of killing an Afghan civilian in 2012, the only person charged thus far stemming from investigations conducted pursuant to recommendations issued in 2020 by an independent inquiry, known as the Brereton Report.

In March, the UN Security Council extended UNAMA’s mandate for another year.

A UK inquiry into alleged abuses by the country’s special forces during military operations in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013 continued to hear evidence in closed sessions but released little public information.

Advocacy by Afghan women activists increased momentum toward defining gender apartheid as a crime against humanity under international law.

Germany, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands continued to pursue an initiative that could lead to a case before the International Court of Justice on discrimination against women and held a second consultation with Afghan human rights defenders in March 2025.