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Urja R Kudalkar
30 September 2026 |
Recently the Zan times, and The Guardian released a report on cases of femicide, where killing of women and girls because of their gender have been rising in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. A joint investigation by Zan Times and The Guardian, published in August 2026, tracked cases of women killed across 10 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces since the takeover. The reporting drew on 174 cases already documented by local Afghan media and 57 additional cases the journalists verified directly, for a combined total of 231 recorded cases. Of those 231 cases, 53 were officially declared suicides, frequently by Afghan authorities even where families and witnesses describe clear signs of violence. The provinces with the highest recorded tolls were Jawzjan (36 cases), Herat (32), Badakhshan (28), and Ghazni (26).
1. Who are victims and perpetrators?
Victims in the dataset ranged in age from five to 65, and the category of "victim" extends beyond wives: sisters, mothers, and other female relatives who intervened during or after an incident of violence were also killed. Seven in ten victims 165 of the 231 were housewives with no independent income, which links directly to their inability to leave abusive situations. Most killings took place inside the victim's own home. The aggressors identified in the cases are close male relative’s husbands, fathers, and brothers. Several documented cases illustrate this pattern: Liza Shams, 33, died in Kabul in February 2026 after being beaten by her husband, while Fereshta Emadi, 33, a UN employee also in Kabul, was found dead in May 2026 after her husband claimed suicide despite colleagues citing fifteen years of abuse. Elsewhere, a 14-year-old girl in Kandahar was shot by her Taliban-member husband in Sar-e Pul. The investigation also found that relatives who try to help a victim, faced retaliation from the Taliban.
2. What causes the gender-based violence in Afghanistan?
Evidence from the investigation suggests femicide is not a new phenomenon produced entirely by Taliban rule, but a long-standing pattern of gender-based violence that has intensified because the mechanisms that once constrained it have been dismantled. Even before the Taliban's return, Afghan women experienced gender-based violence at nearly three times the global average: UN Women's 2024 Afghanistan Gender Index found that in 2018, close to 35 percent of Afghan women reported violence from a partner in the previous year, compared with a global average of about 13 percent. What has changed since August 2021 is the structure of accountability. The Taliban dissolved the Ministry of Women's Affairs, the special prosecutor's office for violence against women, and the national shelter network for women fleeing abuse. Around 250 female judges were removed from the bench, and female prosecutors were sent home. In this sense, femicide in Afghanistan looks less like a sudden new phenomenon and more like a pre-existing, deeply rooted problem that has been allowed to escalate once institutional authorities were removed.
3. How do structural barriers prevent women from seeking protection?
Several overlapping barriers are economic dependence. The large majority of victims were housewives with no independent income, leaving them with no practical way to leave an abusive household. Legal exclusion: under current interpretation of Afghan law, a woman cannot be a direct party to her own legal case. Mothers seeking justice for a murdered daughter must transfer power of attorney to a male relative sometimes to the same husband accused of the killing which can stall a case entirely. A criminal code that punishes a husband who beats his wife badly enough to cause a visible fracture or wound faces at most 15 days in prison whereas contrast, if a wife leaves for her family's home without her husband's permission and the family does not return her on request, both the wife and her family can face three months' imprisonment under the Taliban's new criminal code. Loss of institutional support and fear of retaliation discourages families from speaking out or pursuing justice.
4. What is the Taliban’s response?
The Taliban administration does not collect or publish data on femicide, and the office that once did the Attorney General's Office was abolished in 2023. The state's response has largely been inaction, and at times obstruction suspects are rarely arrested, only 58 arrests across 231 cases and those held are often freed within days. Deaths by domestic violence are frequently recorded as suicide instead, which shuts down further investigation. The legal framework itself has moved in a direction that critics argue discourages women from seeking help, punishment for domestic violence that causes visible injury at 15 days' imprisonment while threatening longer sentences for wives who leave home without permission.
References
“Her face was beaten in': how Taliban rule ushered in a new era of women being killed,” Zan Times , 07 August 2026
https://zantimes.com/2026/08/07/her-face-was-beaten-in-how-taliban-rule-ushered-in-a-new-era-of-women-being-killed/
“Afghanistan women Taliban violence battered beaten,” The Guardian, 07 August 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/aug/07/afghanistan-women-taliban-violence-battered-beaten
“231 Femicide Cases Recorded in Afghanistan Since Taliban Returned to Power,” Afghanistan International, 08 August 2026
https://www.afintl.com/en/202608088801
