According to the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, 70 civilians were killed and 478 injured in Afghanistan in the last three months of 2025. “There were more casualties earlier this week, when 13 civilians were killed and several more were injured following airstrikes by Pakistani forces,” Türk said.
Deadly decrees
The latest batch of Taliban decrees since the group invaded Kabul in 2021 increases the number of crimes punishable by death and allows women and children to be beaten in their homes.
Criticism of the authorities is also a criminal offense and the prevailing conclusion is that Afghanistan is now “a human rights graveyard,” Türk told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the U.N.’s main human rights forum.
“The segregation system is reminiscent of apartheid, based on gender rather than race,” she said. He de facto In fact, the authorities have criminalized the presence of women and girls in public life. They are prohibited from accessing secondary and higher education, and most jobs. Discrimination affects their health care, their access to civic space, and their freedom of movement and expression.”
Veiled threat
As an indication of the increasingly widespread controls and repression that the Afghan people now endure in their daily lives, the High Commissioner described how vice legislation is used to ensure that men grow beards and that women wear the hijab according to strict rules.
The “Law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” is also used to enforce the rule that women only leave home with a male guardian, while prohibiting music and images of living beings.
Since September 7 of last year, the de facto Authorities have prevented Afghan women, including U.N. staff, contractors and visitors, from entering U.N. facilities across the country. “These restrictions are unprecedented and deeply disturbing,” Türk said, urging the international community to “put pressure on the de facto authorities” to respect their international human rights obligations.
“In Afghanistan and elsewhere, human rights violations and abuses have serious implications for peace and security,” the High Commissioner insisted, before adding that his Office will continue to “document and record the violations and abuses that have taken place in Afghanistan.”
The desperate and deteriorating situation of the people of Afghanistan has been a major and long-standing concern of the global community. In addition to the Human Rights Council, which gives a voice to the country’s people, the situation is regularly addressed in UN Security Council debates, where sanctions are applied, among other measures, including monitoring.
The UN General Assembly is also fully committed to Afghanistan and has passed resolutions expressing continued support for the Afghan people and a “stable, secure and economically self-sufficient State, free of terrorism, illicit narcotics, transnational organized crime and corruption.”
Beyond the world body, the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Taliban Supreme Court chief Abdul Hakim Haqqani.
The order states that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both men are guilty of “ordering, inducing or soliciting the crime of persecution against humanity… against girls, women and other persons who do not conform to the Taliban’s policy on gender, gender identity or expression; and for political reasons against persons perceived as ‘allies of girls and women’.”