The Independent: A new penal code issued by decree in Afghanistan sets harsher punishments for the mistreatment of animals than for domestic violence against women and solidifies into law inequality based on gender and social status. The decree, which was signed by Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada in January, “defines several crimes and punishments that contravene Afghanistan’s international legal obligations” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said Thursday in remarks to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.      Full news...

RAWA NEWS: Taliban morality enforcers (Religious police) disrupted a graduation ceremony for medical students in Herat on 16 January, entering the venue while armed and halting the program. During the incident, more than 50 graduates were forced to remove their neckties in front of hundreds of attendees. A video from the event shows armed Taliban members, including one carrying a Kalashnikov...      Full news...

RAWA NEWS: Herat, Afghanistan — Khadija Ahmadzada, a 22-year-old Afghan athlete and women’s taekwondo coach, was detained by Taliban “morality” forces on January 10, 2026 while training female students at a hidden sports club in Herat’s Jebrail district, according to local sources. Ahmadzada — who has been involved in taekwondo as both a competitor and coach and is reported to have been a member of Afghanistan’s national taekwondo team      Full news...

Zamin: Researchers from Georgetown University (USA) studied the situation of women in 188 countries and identified Afghanistan as the most dangerous country for women in the world. In the annual report of the research, dated December 31, 2025, it was noted that after Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Haiti, and Burundi had the lowest ratings regarding women's safety and their rights.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan’s internet and mobile telephone services were down nationwide on Tuesday, and while the Taliban administration offered no immediate explanation, in recent weeks it has voiced concern about pornography online. The Taliban’s restrictions on women and freedom of expression have drawn criticism from rights groups and foreign governments since the former insurgents resumed control of Afghanistan in 2021. Here are some other actions the Taliban has taken this year.      Full news...

Reuters: services reported no connectivity and disruption to flights and financial services. The Taliban administration offered no immediate explanation for the outage and could not be reached for comment. The UN called on authorities to fully restore connections. In the past, the Taliban have voiced concern about online pornography, and authorities cut fibre-optic links to some provinces in recent weeks, with officials citing morality concerns.      Full news...

IFJ: Afghan journalists endured ongoing harassment and intimidation from Taliban authorities in July, with the jailing of at least seven media workers. The International Federation of Journalists joins its affiliate, the Afghan Independent Journalists Union (AIJU), in calling for the immediate release of all media workers and an end to the arbitrary detention of media workers. The arrests were recorded in IFJ monitoring between July 6 to 30. In one incident, three journalists were arrested on July 24 by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.      Full news...

RAWA News: In a renewed and intensified assault on women’s freedoms, the Taliban has launched a wave of arbitrary arrests across Afghanistan, targeting women and girls accused of violating the group’s extreme interpretation of hijab rules. Over the past week alone, dozens of women have been detained in Kabul, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, under vague and ever-changing standards of “modesty,” with no due process or legal justification. These arrests are taking place in public spaces — streets, shopping malls, cafes, and university campuses — where women are simply trying to go about their daily lives.      Full news...

RAWANews: Fresh violence has broken out in Khash district of Badakhshan province, where armed clashes between Taliban forces and local residents have resulted in at least seven deaths and more than 40 injuries over the past two days, local sources report. The unrest began after Taliban fighters intervened in a funeral ceremony for victims of earlier violence in the area. Residents opposed their presence, triggering violent confrontations. Some news outlets have reported that up to 15 people were killed by the Taliban during the crackdown.      Full news...

RAWANews: Local sources in Helmand say that a 45-year-old man, who already has two other wives, has married a 6-year-old girl. According to the sources, the girl’s father gave her in marriage to this older man “in exchange for money.” Child marriage, particularly the marriage of young girls to elderly or middle-aged men, is considered one of the widespread cultural forms of violence across Afghanistan, which has significantly increased since the Taliban’s return to power.      Full news...

WePresent: Over the course of six months, photographer Kiana Hayeri and researcher Melissa Cornet created a portrait of the lives of Afghan women under the strict regime of the Taliban. In a country facing one of the most severe women’s rights crises in the world, “No Woman’s Land” captures their struggles, but also shines a light on the subtle yet powerful ways they are resisting. from secret classrooms to moments of quiet togetherness at home. Here, Hayeri tells Phoebe West how the pair approached the project despite the limited access under the Taliban regime, and why resistance is a necessity for the women of Afghanistan.      Full news...

Deutsche Welle: In 2001, the Taliban destroyed two giant statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan valley, erasing traces of a pre-Islamic past. Amid many other global crises, the human rights situation in Afghanistan has been overshadowed in the international media. Millions of people continue to suffer from systemic rights violations under the Taliban-run government, a UN report has found.      Full news...

BBC: The Taliban government in Afghanistan has banned chess until further notice due to fears the game is a source of gambling. Officials said the game has been prohibited indefinitely until its compatibility with Islamic law can be determined. Chess is the latest sport to be restricted by the Taliban. Women are essentially barred from participating in sport at all.      Full news...

The Guardian: When the Taliban began marching towards cities across Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, Alia, a 22-year-old Afghan journalist, found herself doing some of the most important work of her short life and career.In the weeks leading up to the Taliban takeover in August, Alia’s voice on the radio became familiar to many in northern Afghanistan. She reported on the withdrawal of foreign troops, the siege of government offices and on the detention of former officials in her province.      Full news...

Reuters: Since seizing power in 2021, Afghanistan's Taliban administration has rolled back hard-fought rights won by Afghan women and girls during two decades of rule by American-backed governments.The International Criminal Court prosecutor on Thursday said he had applied for arrest warrants for Taliban leaders, including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of crimes against humanity for widespread discrimination against women and girls.      Full news...

RASC News Agency: On Saturday, the first day of Ramadan, Whitney Wright, an American adult film actress, released new images documenting her travels across various Afghanistan cities. In one particularly striking photograph, she is seen carrying a Kalashnikov rifle over her shoulder, raising questions about the nature of her visit. It appears that Wright is moving freely across the country under Taliban protection. Previously, she had shared footage of herself at Band-e Amir, Afghanistan’s renowned national park.      Full news...

National Post: She was 20 years old, dreaming of a fulfilled life. The smart, ambitious young woman was among 20 Afghan women and girls enrolled in a secret school, seeking knowledge and a future.But the Taliban were back in charge after Western forces withdrew from Afghanistan in September 2021, and they had different plans, as did her authoritarian, ultra-conservative father; she would marry an Afghan man of his choosing living in Turkey, a man she did not love.      Full news...

CNN: The Taliban suspended the operation of Afghanistan’s only women’s radio station after raiding its premises on Tuesday, deepening the exclusion of women from public life and society since the group took power in 2021. Kabul-based Radio Begum – a station run by women with content aimed at women’s education – said officers from the Taliban’s information and culture ministry restrained the station’s staff as it searched its premises in the nation’s capital.      Full news...

Times Now News: Ever since retaking power in 2021, the Taliban have ordered the most brutal reversal of women's rights. Women and girls have lost access to education, jobs, public spaces, and even basic rights—many of which most of us would take for granted. Women around the world have been fighting for their rights, and this has dealt a grievous blow to all those efforts. Upon their return, the Taliban have established the most regressive government. Actor Meryl Streep, who attended an event in September last year as part of the UN General Assembly in New York, spoke about the situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan.      Full news...

France 24: The Taliban’s supreme leader has issued an order banning the construction of windows in residential buildings that overlook areas used by Afghan women and saying that existing ones should be blocked. According to a statement released late Saturday by the Taliban government spokesman, new buildings should not have windows through which it is possible to see “the courtyard, kitchen, neighbour’s well and other places usually used by women”.      Full news...

The Associated Press: The Taliban say they will close all national and foreign nongovernmental groups in Afghanistan employing women, the latest crackdown on women’s rights since they took power in August 2021. The announcement comes two years after they told NGOs to suspend the employment of Afghan women, allegedly because they didn’t wear the Islamic headscarf correctly. In a letter published on X Sunday night, the Economy Ministry warned that failure to comply with the latest order would lead to NGOs losing their license to operate in Afghanistan.      Full news...

AFP: Health officials met with directors of education institutes on Monday in the capital Kabul to inform them of the ruling, an official from the public health ministry who was not authorised to speak to the media told AFP. "There is no official letter but the directors of institutes were informed in a meeting that women and girls can't study anymore in their institutes," he said. "They were not provided with any details and justification and were just told of the order of the supreme leader and were asked to implement it."      Full news...

The Guardian: Destitute Afghan women arrested for begging under draconian new Taliban laws have spoken of “brutal” rapes and beatings in detention. Over the past few months, many women said they had been targeted by Taliban officials and detained under anti-begging laws passed this year. While in prison, they claim they were subjected to sexual abuse, torture and forced labour, and witnessed children being beaten and abused. All the women said they had no other option to begging on the streets for money and food for their children after being unable to find paid work.      Full news...

AFP: Checking imported books, removing texts from libraries and distributing lists of banned titles — Taliban authorities are working to remove “un-Islamic” and anti-government literature from circulation. Checking imported books, removing texts from libraries and distributing lists of banned titles — Taliban authorities are working to remove “un-Islamic” and anti-government literature from circulation.      Full news...

The Independent: The Taliban in Afghanistan have implemented a bizarre new edict that will further curb the voices of women who are already prohibited from speaking in public.Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the Taliban minister for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, declared that women must refrain from reciting the Quran aloud in the presence of other women, reported Amu TV, an Afghan news channel based in Virginia, US.      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan’s morality ministry is gradually introducing a ban on images of living beings in media, with multiple provinces announcing restrictions and some Taliban officials refusing to be photographed or filmed, journalists across the country told AFP. Since mid-October the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) has held meetings with journalists in one province after another.      Full news...

AFP: Afghanistan’s Taliban morality ministry pledged Monday to implement a law banning news media from publishing images of all living things, with journalists told the rule will be gradually enforced. It comes after the Taliban government recently announced legislation formalising their strict interpretations of Islamic law that have been imposed since they swept to power in 2021.      Full news...

VOA news: Hardline Taliban authorities in Afghanistan reported Wednesday that nine people, including at least two women, were publicly flogged after being convicted of various crimes, such as adultery. Five of the punishments took place at a sports stadium in Kandahar, capital of the eponymous southern province. Local Taliban officials, judicial officers, and ordinary Afghans were among the onlookers. The Taliban’s Supreme Court announced the details, saying the five individuals were found guilty of adultery, sodomy, and robbery, with each of them receiving 39 lashes and prison sentences ranging from two to seven years.      Full news...

Deutsche Welle: The Taliban recently imposed additional restrictions on media organizations in Afghanistan, prohibiting criticism of their laws and policies and banning the broadcast of live political shows, according to Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), an independent organization supporting the media and press freedom in Afghanistan. The AFJC said the Taliban instructed media managers during a meeting on September 21 that the topics for political shows must be approved first by Taliban members. The Taliban issued fresh guidelines instructing media organizations to only invite guests who are approved by the group.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The Taliban is using female workers to spy on other women to enforce harsh new laws. Since returning to power in 2021, the Afghan regime has banned women from working outside the home or attending school and university. But some women are still employed at the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MPVPV), the body that polices the restrictions, and more recruits are wanted. “They are needed to handle other women,” said an official from the ministry.      Full news...