40 countries stood up for women of Afghanistan. None from the region. None from Muslim-majority countries (except Albania and Bosnia).

Urgent Call to Renew and Strengthen Sanctions in Response to the Systematic Repression of Women in Afghanistan! Tomorrow, the United Nations Security Council’s Afghanistan Sanctions Committee will meet to discuss the renewal of sanctions on the Taliban. On the eve of this critical discussion, we—the Afghan Women Activists Coordinating Body (AWACB)—have submitted the attached formal open letter on behalf of Afghan women, girls, and women human rights defenders inside Afghanistan and across the diaspora. In this letter, AWACB urgently calls on the Security Council to renew and strengthen the existing sanctions regime in response to the Taliban’s systematic, legalized repression of women and girls. Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban have dismantled fundamental rights through a series of decrees and regulations that ban women from education, employment, public life, healthcare training, and legal participation, amounting to a comprehensive system of exclusion. The letter outlines how these policies meet international legal thresholds for gender persecution and, as increasingly recognized by UN experts and legal scholars, gender apartheid. It further highlights the Taliban’s recently issued Criminal Procedural Regulation, adopted without transparency or due process, which entrenches gender-based domination and legitimizes practices that violate core prohibitions under international human rights law, including protections against slavery, torture, and cruel or degrading treatment. AWACB’s letter recalls the Taliban’s violations of binding international norms under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other core treaties, and stresses that continued impunity risks further destabilization within Afghanistan and beyond. The letter therefore urges the Security Council to maintain robust sanctions, reject normalization or sanction relief absent verifiable reversals of discriminatory laws, explicitly recognize systematic gender persecution as a basis for sanctions, and support accountability mechanisms, including international justice processes. As the Sanctions Committee convenes tomorrow, this letter represents the collective voice of Afghan women who continue to bear the direct consequences of the Taliban’s policies. Its message is clear: weakening or failing to renew sanctions will entrench impunity and normalize institutionalized gender repression, with devastating consequences for millions of women and girls. @UN @UN_News_Centre @USUN @UKUN_NewYork @RussiaUN @Chinamission2un @ChinaMissionGva @FranceONU @GermanyUN @UNAMAnews @UN_HRC @UNHCRAfg @UNHCRDEUTSCHLAND @eui_org @EU_Commission @EUProsecutor @EU_Social @EuEatAfghan2014 @EU_Partnerships @BarhamSalih @USEmbassyKabul @DrPatoni @HNeumannMEP @C_AB_ @hrw_fa @heatherbarr1 @UNWatch @SR_Afghanistan @USAmbKabul @ErnstCornelia @AuswaertigesAmt @realZalmayMK @MichelleObama @HillaryClinton @Malala @vladimirputiniu @POTUS @ABaerbockArchiv @UN_PGA @DEonHumanRights @belquisa2 @jahanzebwesa @MujibMehrdad @ShaharzadAkbar @sarahadams @SaraNanni @BBCWorld @cnni @amnestypress

History will record not only who committed injustice, but who looked away and allowed it to endure.