UN Women News: Since August 2021, Afghan women and girls have been grappling with increasingly restrictive decrees limiting their participation in all aspects of social, economic, and political life. These have confined millions of women to their home, restricting their important contributions to society. Their already dire situation has been compounded in recent months by humanitarian crises. First, devastating earthquakes rocked western Afghanistan in October 2023. Then, since November 2023, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been forced to return after a Pakistani decree on undocumented migrants went into effect. According to International Organization for Migration (IOM) data, an estimated 80 per cent of those affected are women and children.      Full news...

Indian Express News: Afghan women feel scared or unsafe leaving their homes alone because of Taliban decrees and enforcement campaigns on clothing and male guardians, according to a report from the UN mission in Afghanistan.The report, issued Friday, comes days before a UN-convened meeting in the Qatari capital is set to start, with member states and special envoys to Afghanistan to discuss engagement with the Taliban and the country’s crises, including the human rights situation.      Full news...

The Independent: The Taliban on Thursday executed two men convicted of stabbing by gunfire in Afghanistan’s southeastern Ghazni province. Thousands of people watched the public execution in broad daylight after the Taliban-led Supreme Court convicted the two men for a murder by stabbing. The court identified the two men as Syed Jamal from central Wardak province and Gul Khan from Ghazni but did not clarify who carried out the stabbings.      Full news...

The Hindu News:A Taliban official said journalists were committing “a major sin” by taking pictures, Afghan media reported on Wednesday. Television and pictures of living things were banned under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been imposed since authorities took back power in Afghanistan in 2021. “Taking pictures is a major sin,” Mohammad Hashem Shaheed Wror, a senior official in the justice ministry, told a seminar for department staff in the capital Kabul on Tuesday, according to footage broadcast by several media.      Full news...

Afghan Women News: Local sources in Balkh province report the shooting of a young woman by unidentified armed individuals in the province. According to the sources, the body of a woman who had been shot was discovered in the village of Kol Ambu in the Balkh district of Balkh province on the morning of Monday, February 5. According to an informed source, this woman was shot by unidentified armed individuals around 4 a.m. Her identity and the motive behind her murder are not yet clear.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: In the last two and a half years after regaining power in Afghanistan, the Taliban, have created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis. They have systematically violated the rights of women and girls including as they relate to education, paid employment, freedom of speech and movement, and political participation among many others. The response of the international community has been tepid and seems to lack an appreciation of how the situation in Afghanistan has grave implications for the rights of women and girls globally. More needs to be done to prevent this from developing any further and to reinforce global commitment to gender equality.      Full news...

Afghanistan Time:United Nations Assistance Mission in its latest report has said that the Taliban’s Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice played a key role in enforcing restrictions on women’s rights, particularly in areas of work, education, and freedom of movement. The ministry’s actions, including impeding unmarried women and those without a male guardian from working or accessing services, were documented during the reported period.      Full news...

East London Advertiser: The Taliban are restricting Afghan women’s access to work, travel and healthcare if they are unmarried or do not have a male guardian, according to a UN report.In one incident, officials from the Afghan vice and virtue ministry advised a woman to get married if she wanted to keep her job at a healthcare facility, saying it was inappropriate for an unwed woman to work.The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and stopped girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade (aged 11-12) as part of harsh measures they imposed after taking power in 2021, despite initially promising more moderate rule.      Full news...

CBS News: Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have rounded up dozens of women in an apparent crackdown on perceived violations of the group’s strict dress code. Dozens of women and girls were detained briefly last week in Kabul, a senior Taliban spokesperson told CBS News on Monday, confirming what appeared to be a new tactic in the group’s efforts to curb women’s rights. The arrests by the Taliban’s morality police occurred over several days and first came to light via videos and photos posted on social media. The Taliban confirmed the arrests after photos and video clips showed women being loaded onto the back of police pickup trucks in the capital city.      Full news...

Khama Press: Sources from Herat confirm that the Taliban administration has prohibited women’s tailoring in the central region of this province. Simultaneously, some media outlets have reported establishing a specialized women’s market in Balkh. The source, who preferred not to be named in the report, informed Khama Press that Taliban forces entered the city Wednesday morning to inspect commercial markets. Several markets, including all women’s clothing tailoring centres, have been closed as part of this inspection.      Full news...

BNN News: Taliban fighters in Herat province, Afghanistan, launched a crackdown on girls’ education, forcibly shutting down several educational centers. The closures were enforced by physically blocking entrances and sealing gates, striking a blow to female education in a country where it has already been severely curtailed. In Ghazni province, schools were previously closed due to reasons such as male teachers shaving their beards and female teachers not adhering to the hijab dress code. For over two years, the Taliban has enforced a ban on girls attending universities and schools beyond the sixth grade.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: Hauling women off of a plane when they had almost made their escape to study overseas. Banning women from one of the world’s most stunning national parks. Pushing girls out of school at age 10. Dismissing female nursery school teachers. Shuttering all beauty salons at a cost of 60,000 women’s jobs.The last month or two has been a busy time for the Taliban. As we mark the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that led to the Taliban being toppled, they are fully back in charge and deeply unchanged, despite promises to the contrary. These are the latest among what UN experts describe as their “widespread, systematic, and all-encompassing” attack on the rights of women and girls.      Full news...

Gallup News: Prospects remain grim for women and girls inside Afghanistan in 2023, as well as the hundreds of thousands of undocumented refugee women and girls whom Pakistan is currently forcing to return to the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. As they have since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, Gallup surveys continue to show that nearly all Afghan women are suffering and most do not feel women in their country are treated with respect. But this year, women’s satisfaction with the freedom they have to choose what they do with their lives has dropped to an unprecedented low. Just 11% of Afghan women interviewed in July said they are satisfied with the freedom they have to choose what they do with their lives, which is a new record low, not just for Afghanistan but for any country or population that Gallup has ever polled.      Full news...

Hasht-e-Subh: The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, under the Taliban’s rule in Ghazni province, has issued a directive prohibiting the treatment of male and female patients in the same building within the province’s hospitals, according to sources.Officials from the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue in Ghazni province have warned healthcare facility authorities that violations will result in penalties.      Full news...

Hasht-e Subh: According to the findings of Hasht-e Subh Daily, the Taliban have arrested at least 59 residents of Panjshir province in the past two weeks, both from the province itself and Kabul.These arrests took place in various provinces provinces starting from October 16th of this year. The findings reveal that the Taliban detained 30 individuals from Pajwai, 15 from Dara-e-Abdullahkhel, two from Takhaw village, and two others from Abshar district in Panjshir province.      Full news...

Bayan News: Officials of the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Balkh province have blocked more than 10 women’s tailoring shops today, Monday (October 30), due to non-compliance with the orders of the Islamic Emirate.Sources say that these women’s tailoring shops were located in the bustling Zalal Trade Market in Mazar-i-Sharif city, and it had been instructed that these shops be relocated to the Khadija Kubra Market, which is dedicated to women.      Full news...

Rukhshana: Two women have been killed allegedly by their husbands in separate incidents in Kapisa province, while a third married woman has allegedly taken her own life after a domestic dispute in northern Faryab province. A reliable source in Kapisa province, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said a 17-year-old named Mosak was allegedly shot dead by her husband in Chishma area of Hese-Awal area of Kohistan district on Sunday.      Full news...

Rukhshana: Morality police in eastern Afghanistan have ordered media in Kunduz province to send their reports to the Taliban before publication. The statement from the Ministry warned audio, visual, and print/online media from publishing content “against the Islamic Sharia”. Media is not permitted to publish critical reports of authorities. Those that have done so have been punished and threatened, including being imprisoned, beaten or having their families threatened.      Full news...

Rukhshana: Taliban forces have detained three employees of Radio Naseem in central Daikundi province and sealed its office closed, according to two local sources.Naseem Radio station was mostly active in the field of health and environment in Daikundi province and had recently published several reports about the situation of women in the province. The three men were also forced to commit to not speak to external media or reporters.      Full news...

Rukhshana: An Afghan women protestor and her adult son have been detained by Taliban forces in a raid on the family home in Qala-e-Fatullah in Kabul. Mrs Parsi is one of the protesting women and a member of the women’s movement called the Spontaneous Women’s Movement in Kabul. She has participated in many demonstrations for women’s rights in Afghanistan.      Full news...

Rukhshana: Fears are growing of the Taliban’s moves to expand extremist religious schools in Afghanistan, with more buildings allegedly being claimed for this purpose.Since taking power in Afghanistan over two years ago, the Taliban have been slowly building more religious schools across the country.Two buildings of the Herat teacher training center were turned into jihadist schools in April. Before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, more than four thousand men and women had been studying teaching in the center.      Full news...

Rukhshana: The Taliban’s Vice and Virtue department in Bamyan released a statement that they had a meeting with local traders and businessmen to inform them that tight and thin clothes are “against Islamic Sharia and Afghan culture” and residents should not use such clothes.Fashion shops in Bamyan province have been told to stop importing short or tight dresses to sell at the market, according to shopkeepers in Bamyan Bazaar.      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...

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...

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...

VOA:The Taliban on Wednesday banned all political parties in Afghanistan, stating that such activities are against Islamic law, or Sharia. More than 70 major and small political parties were formally registered with the Ministry of Justice until two years ago, when the then-insurgent Taliban reclaimed control of war-ravaged Afghanistan. Many self-exiled Afghan political leaders have since opposed the new rulers in Kabul and called for armed resistance to dislodge them, but they have not received international backing for their campaign.      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...

Classic FM: Photos have emerged from Afghanistan of musical instruments being set on fire by the Taliban as a spokesperson for the ruling government describes music as “immoral”. One photo showing four men watching a large pile of instruments engulfed by flames was released to the press by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice on Sunday and was reportedly taken in Herat, Afghanistan’s third largest city.      Full news...

BBC News: The Taliban have burned musical instruments in Afghanistan, claiming music “causes moral corruption”. Thousands of dollars worth of musical equipment went up in smoke on a bonfire on Saturday in western Herat province. Since taking power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions, including on playing music in public. All forms of music were banned from social gatherings, TV, and radio while the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan from the mid-90s until 2001.      Full news...