Afghan women's rights activists demand global attention to gender apartheid

Journalist Khadija Amin is documenting the experiences of Afghan women through her book, ‘Unveiled: The Free Woman Against the Taliban’. Amin highlights that her work aims to provide a global audience with a realistic view of Afghanistan, moving beyond narratives of suffering to showcase the resistance and resilience of women and girls under Taliban rule.

Amin noted the difficulty of accessing reliable data due to the lack of transparency under the current administration, though she utilized statistics from organizations like UNICEF and UNESCO. She frames the book as a tool for documenting what she describes as ‘gender apartheid’ and the systematic deprivation of rights.

In a related development, Afghan women's rights movements and civil society activists issued a joint statement criticizing the silence of Uzbek presidential administration head Saida Mirzayeva regarding the situation of women in Afghanistan. While the activists acknowledged Uzbekistan's progress in female political participation, they expressed deep disappointment that Mirzayeva did not address the systematic exclusion of Afghan women from education, employment, and public life during a recent global forum.

The activists warned that focusing solely on Afghanistan's economic integration and regional security—while ignoring human rights violations—risks normalizing the current status quo.