AP: The mental health of Afghan women, who have suffered under harsh measures imposed by the Taliban since taking power two years ago, has deteriorated across the country, according to a joint report from three U.N. agencies released Tuesday. Nearly 70 percent reported that feelings of anxiety, isolation and depression had grown significantly worse between April and June, an increase from 57 percent in the preceding quarter, according to the report from U.N Women, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.      Full news...

VOA: There has been a “disturbing surge” in the number of female suicides and attempted female suicides in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control in 2021, according to a report by British newspaper The Guardian. The Taliban government has not published any statistics on the phenomenon and has forbidden health care workers from sharing the numbers, the newspaper said. However, the report said health care providers agreed to privately share the information from August 2021 to August 2022 “to highlight an urgent public health crisis” that has made Afghanistan one of the few locations in the world where more women than men kill themselves.      Full news...

HRW: Taliban authorities in Afghanistan are committing the crime against humanity of gender persecution against women and girls, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Since taking over the country in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed laws and policies intended to deny women and girls throughout the country their fundamental rights because of their gender.      Full news...

BBC: The Taliban government have banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir national park in Bamiyan province. Afghanistan’s acting minister of virtue and vice, Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, said women had not been observing hijab inside the park. He called on religious clerics and security agencies to forbid women from entering until a solution was found.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Hora Sadat, a prominent female Afghan YouTuber, mysteriously died in Kabul on August 21. Reports suggested the 25-year-old was poisoned after attending a public event. Sadat, who had 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, produced videos on social issues for a mainly young audience. She also participated in public events organized by women in Kabul, although she was not known for publicly criticizing the Taliban.      Full news...

Amu: As per reliable accounts, these women were participating in a protest held at a residence located in Khairkhana area in northern Kabul when the Taliban forces took them into custody.A video obtained by Amu captures the moment when a contingent of Taliban members entered the premises, making efforts to detain the women involved.      Full news...

8am: In a recent and concerning development, Taliban fighters have reportedly detained eight individuals associated with the “Union and Solidarity of Afghan Women” movement following an attack on a gathering of women protesters in Kabul. Sources reveal that the Taliban apprehended these eight individuals within Kabul city and have taken them into custody. The incident unfolded on Sunday, August 20th, when Taliban fighters executed the arrests from a confined location in the Khairkhana district of Kabul.      Full news...

RAWANews: On the 15th August, two terrible years have passed when, according to the plans of the US and NATO, the brutal and misogynist creatures named Taliban, were replaced with the "republican" brothers and took the responsibility for the advancement of the United States colonial policies in our homeland; Two years that brought nothing but the collapse of the last manifestations of freedom, humanity and knowledge, poverty and cruelty for the people and especially the women of Afghanistan...      Full news...

The Guardian: Shima Forugh* was in 10th grade at school when she decided she would join the Afghan army. It had been taboo in Afghanistan’s patriarchal society for women to join the military, but hundreds of women like Forugh broke through this restriction.When she was 21, she joined the 207th Zafar army corps in Herat. Her father, who was also a member of the Afghan army, and mother both supported her decision to sign up.      Full news...

Afghanistan International: On Saturday, two groups of women held demonstrations in Kabul and Takhar against the "tyrannical policies of the Taliban".Sources from Kabul told Afghanistan International that the Taliban had been aware of the women’s demonstration in Kabul and still attacked the demonstrators.However, Afghanistan International received images from the protest site which showed that the female protesters had changed the location of the demonstration and read their resolution in a different area.      Full news...

WION: Gen-Z, their predecessor millennials and even the people from Gen-X often take to social media when they are behind or near the wheel, to show a fleeting world in front of the car's windshield sometimes accompanied by a particular music track.For Zareena, 24, who last year lost her right to attend university in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan's capital Kabul, a behind-the-steering-wheel Snapchat update while she was on Kabul's roads was a part of her life until August 2021. Not anymore.      Full news...

Zan Times: Zarifa Ghafari had arguably one of the toughest jobs in the world: being a female mayor in Afghanistan. But, aside from that political role, Zan Times discovered that some of Ghafari’s claims about her life, education, and experiences contained contradictions and inconsistencies. Zan Times discovered that even basic information, such as her place of birth, is inconsistent across the media. According to her memoir, she was born in Kabul. A piece published by Vanity Fair in March 2023 reports that she was born in Paktia province. However, back in 2018, she told Afghanistan’s EtilaatRoz that she was “born in Maidan Wardak.”      Full news...

The Washington Post: Afghanistan’s primary mental health facility in Kabul has filled with patients who say they are experiencing a different kind of suffering, he said. With the Taliban leadership severely restricting female education and work, there are mounting concerns about the mental health of girls and women. The restrictions and “sudden changes,” said Azim, appear to be at the root of the trauma suffered by most women and girls now seeking help at this hospital.      Full news...

The Guardian: The Taliban administration in Afghanistan has ordered beauty salons to close within a month, the morality ministry said, in the latest shrinking of access to public places for Afghan women. “The deadline for the closing of beauty parlours for women is one month,” Mohammad Sadiq Akif, a spokesperson for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue, said on Tuesday, referring to a ministry notice.      Full news...

EFE: Without a husband or grown-up sons to go out and earn in a highly orthodox and patriarchal Islamist society, widows in Afghanistan are left in a lurch, condemned to poverty on account of increasing restrictions on women by the Taliban. Fatima is the oldest of four widows in a 100 square meter house in the northern state of Kandahar, a few meters from the office of the provincial governor. The other three are her 25- and 30-year-old daughters-in-law – each with four children – and her niece, who has one child.      Full news...

Tortoise media: Afghan women working for the UN in Kabul say they have been betrayed by the organisation’s failure to protect them from the Taliban’s gender apartheid. Also in today’s Sensemaker: why an opposition win in Thailand isn’t quite a win.      Full news...

THE SCOTSMAN: The opposition party in Afghanistan has "strongly appealed" to the United Nations Security Council and the international community to refrain from legitimising the Taliban regime ahead of the UN’s quarterly meeting on Afghanistan. The National Resistance Council for the Salvation of Afghanistan (NRCSA) warned international authorities that recognising the Taliban as a legitimate government would be detrimental to the pursuit of peace, stability, and the rights of the Afghan people      Full news...

Devdiscourse: "One of the most illustrative examples of the systematic discrimination against women and girls in Afghanistan today is the relentless issuance of edicts, decrees, declarations and directives restricting their rights, including their freedom of movement, attire and behaviour, and their access to education, work, health and justice,"      Full news...

Amnesty International: The report, ‘The Taliban’s war on women: The crime against humanity of gender persecution in Afghanistan’, presents a detailed legal analysis of how the Taliban’s draconian restrictions on the rights of Afghanistan’s women and girls, together with the use of imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, could amount to the crime against humanity of gender persecution under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).      Full news...

UN News: This year, some 2.3 million Afghan boys and girls are expected to face acute malnutrition. Of this number, 875,000 will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. Furthermore, around 840,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers are likely to experience acute malnutrition, jeopardising their ability to give their babies the best start in life.      Full news...

SALAM WATANDAR: “We came to Kabul from Kapisa, hoping that some job would be available for us, but for now, my husband works as laborer and I am also a housewife. It is nearly impossible to pay the expenses of the house of my in-laws, which was used for our livelihood.” said Sheeba, a woman who worked as a teacher before the establishment of the Islamic Emirate. After imposition of restrictions on women, she stayed at home and her husband became unemployed at the same time.Sheeba said that she used to work as a teacher in Kapisa and with the closing of the schools, she became unemployed and now she is in confused and without a future plan. Unemployment has multiplied the pressure of life on her shoulders. “Problems of house rent and food cannot be solved. This situation hurts me and puts pressure on my soul. We have a miserable life.”      Full news...

8 Subh: Female prisoners in Taliban-controlled prisons in the provinces of Jowzjan, Faryab, and Samangan are enduring a deplorable situation. They face humiliation, insults, physical torture, and sexual assault. According to the findings of Hasht-e Subh Daily, since the collapse of the Republic regime, the Taliban have detained and imprisoned 90 women in the three northern provinces. Out of these, 36 women are in Faryab province, 34 women are in Samangan province, and another 20 women are in Jowzjan province. These women have been subjected to inappropriate treatment by the Taliban in prisons over the past year.      Full news...

UN News: Following a systematic crackdown on the rights of Afghan women and girls by the Taliban – from attending school to working at the UN – “the stage may be set for multiple preventable deaths that could amount to femicide” unless restrictions are reversed rapidly, independent UN human rights experts announced on Friday, following an eight-day visit to the country.      Full news...

Hasht-e-Subh Daily: Numerous reports have surfaced over the past two years about extramarital relationships and sexual assault by Taliban commanders on young women and girls during their rule in the country. Recently, in Ghor province, a Taliban militant named Abdul Qodos attempted to sexually assault a young girl named Zarmina in her father’s house in the Saad Siah area of the city of Firozkoh, the center of Ghor province. When Zarmina resisted, Abdul Qodos shot and killed her. Reliable sources in Ghor province have confirmed these details.      Full news...

EuroNews: A group of Afghan women protested in Kabul on Saturday, defying a crackdown on dissent to urge foreign nations not to formally recognise the Taliban government ahead of a United Nations summit next week.Protesters opposing creeping curbs on women’s rights have been beaten or detained since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021, and security forces have fired into the air to disperse some rallies.      Full news...

The Independent: The Taliban has banned women from participating in Eid gatherings in two districts in Afghanistan ahead of widespread celebrations expected in the country to mark the end of Ramadan. Two similar notices showed local Taliban leaders in northern Baghlan district and the northeastern district of Takhar said “it is forbidden for women to go out in groups during the days of Eid ul-Fitr” on Friday. The orders are not applicable across Afghanistan, but only in the two districts.      Full news...

Nimrokh: The sound of her calloused palms rubbing together was audible as she vigorously rubbed her hands. Seated beside a bountiful collection of freshly picked vegetables, the woman deftly tied them into neat bundles, utilizing pre-threaded strands she had set aside. Mint, onions, chives, and a variety of other vegetables were artfully stacked atop one another, each bundle a testament to her skillful craftsmanship. The small plot of land, situated within the walls of her house yard, provided a humble but plentiful harvest.      Full news...

Index on Censorship: Female journalists are forced to work remotely as much as possible for their own safety, and Zan Times advises them to only speak to sources who they can be sure are not linked to the Taliban. Any time they tell someone they’re a journalist, they risk being identified. For women still working as journalists in Afghanistan, safety is paramount.      Full news...

Kabul Now: he United Nations has asked all its 3,300 female and male staff in Afghanistan to stay home for two days and stop working after its officials “received word of an order” by the Taliban that bans female national employees of the UN agencies from work on Tuesday. UN officials in Afghanistan “received word of an order by the de facto authorities that bans female national staff members of the United Nations from working,” the Reuters quoted the UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric as saying to reporters in New York.      Full news...

Fraqnce24: In the latest example of public punishments carried out by the Taliban, two men were forced to wear a chador, a full-length hijab traditionally worn by women as a form of public "humiliation". But other punishments meted out by the Taliban have been far more violent, including flagellations and public executions. While Afghan activists have documented dozens of public punishments since October 2022, video evidence of them is scarce – only two videos document these brutal tactics.      Full news...