By: Ananya Samavedam
It has been five years since the Taliban returned to power, and the world has largely stopped counting. UN Women, however, has not: their August 2026 data finds that authorities have issued more than 100 decrees targeting women and girls since August 2021. We usually call this a rights crisis, which it is. But responding to it only as a rights crisis has left the underlying causes untouched. The international response has centered on humanitarian aid and calls to reverse restrictions, while the economic and security consequences of the exclusion go largely unmeasured. Until Afghan women’s exclusion is addressed as an economic and security crisis as well, we will not be able to properly address it.
Starting with the labor market, we see only 7 percent of Afghan women are employed: a massive gap compared with 84 percent of Afghan men. UN Women projects that this continued cumulative exclusion could cost the economy $920 million, or 5.8 percent of GDP, between 2024 and 2026. It is common to see this as an accident of poverty, but we must understand that this is the result of policy: Decree no. 12 abolishes legal equality between men and women, only criminalizing violence within marriage if it causes severe, visible physical injury. Decree no. 18 makes it significantly harder for a woman to leave a marriage, while simultaneously preserving men’s unilateral right to divorce. Together with the broader decrees, women are stripped of the legal footing needed to work or act independently. This could be because the regime appears to value controlling society above the performance of its economy, which closely translates to consolidating authority than to constructing a functioning state. That choice creates a major security issue, because a state that removes half its workforce cannot recover on its own and stays dependent on aid.
The implications extend into the future as well. Afghanistan remains the only country that bans girls from high school and women from university. If restrictions persist, UNICEF estimates a loss of more than 25,000 female teachers and health workers by 2030, which are the professionals that state recovery depends on.
The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda asserts a simple premise: societies that include women in public life are more stable, and daily life in Afghanistan appears to be the reverse. Half of Afghan women interviewed leave home only once or twice a month, limiting their ability to reach work, markets, or clinics. Households that lose women’s income and access to necessary services become more dependent on outside help, showing how exclusion restricts help from getting to women: in 2026, more than 10.7 million Afghan women and girls need humanitarian assistance. Though aid is attempting to mitigate the damage, a functioning economy would be able to cover that gap.
The response to this situation is undermined by the same exclusion: the people best placed to deliver humanitarian assistance are the ones being shut out. Taliban forces have blocked Afghan women, including UN staff and contractors, from entering UN premises since September 2025. Restrictions on women working for NGOs, combined with international aid cuts, make it much harder to reach those who need help. Nearly three-quarters of women-led organizations surveyed in Afghanistan experienced funding cuts in 2025, organizations that are among the last lifelines for women and girls.
However, this is also a regional problem. Afghans continue to return from Iran and Pakistan, adding pressure to already stretched communities. Fewer than one in five returning women can earn income, which also contributes to rising debt and food insecurity among returnee families. Economic and social instability rooted in the exclusion of women is not staying inside Afghanistan’s borders.
Given the multifaceted, pressing nature of this situation, what must the international community do differently?
First, we must fund women-led Afghan organizations directly, with flexible support for multiple years. Intermediaries cannot reach women if their programs cannot employ women, so donors must fund those organizations that already deliver healthcare, protection from violence, and mental health support. Second, the cost of keeping women out of the workforce should be accentuated. Governments and multilateral bodies already track growth, inflation, and trade, but gendered economic loss is rarely given the same prominence. A loss of 5.8 percent of GDP would be the center of policy debates if it came from a sanctions regime or a trade dispute, so we must work to bring gender-disaggregated economic data to the forefront. Third, any diplomatic engagement should be tied to measurable benchmarks for women. Criteria such as women’s access to UN premises, NGO work, and secondary education shape diplomatic pressure into focused targets that are easier to enforce.
Five years is undoubtedly enough time for a crisis to feel permanent, but permanence with inaction is risky, because that subconscious silence can be read as consent. Regional forums should treat women’s participation as a condition of economic stability, instead of as a separate humanitarian concern. Ending the exclusion of women is the most practical way to reduce the regional cost of a stalled recovery.