Following the release of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) report documenting sexual assault against 16 women and six girls by Taliban members, survivors and witnesses say these figures represent only a fraction of the true scale of abuse, citing the pervasive repression and climate of fear that prevents victims from speaking out. Women’s rights activists and political figures have welcomed the report, saying it captures part of a bitter reality that women in Afghanistan have been raising for five years. Several political figures also argued that the Taliban, having assumed total power and enforcing repression in the name of Sharia law, cannot evade accountability for these allegations. They further criticized clerics who have chosen silence in the face of such grave abuses.
Adalatkhah, a woman from Balkh province, said the UN report documents only a sliver of the suffering women endure. People are too afraid to speak out under the intense repression, she said, adding that the actual number of sexual assaults and gang rapes inside Taliban detention centers and prisons is far higher than what gets reported. Over the past five years, she added, a significant number of Taliban officials in the province have exploited people’s desperation to force underage girls into marriage.
Julia Parsi, founder of the Women’s Motion Network, told the Hasht-e Subh Daily that she welcomes the report’s publication. It documents part of a painful truth that women in Afghanistan have been crying out about for five years, she said. Women have repeatedly spoken about arbitrary detention, torture, abuse, and sexual violence, she added, yet most of those accounts have gone unheard.
The central question now is what happens next, Ms. Parsi said. If the international community does nothing beyond recording crimes and fails to hold the Taliban accountable, this report will share the fate of dozens before it, she warned. Women in Afghanistan do not need another report to prove they are victims, she said. They need justice, concrete support, and decisive action. Silence and inaction in the face of these crimes, she added, amount to complicity in the continued suffering of millions of women and girls across the country.
Parwana Ibrahimkhail Nijrabi, a human rights activist, said the UNSC report lays bare the depth of the human rights crisis in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, a crisis worsened by the near-total absence of access to justice and functioning legal institutions.
She stressed that serious human rights violations have been documented continuously since August 2021, and that these acts may qualify as crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). From a religious standpoint, she added, rape and sexual violence are explicitly forbidden in Islamic texts and rank among the gravest of sins.
Ms. Nijrabi said the accumulated evidence could open the door to prosecution before international judicial bodies, including the ICC, and may also shape how Rome Statute member states choose to engage with the Taliban going forward.
Rahmatullah Nabil, former Director General of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), responded to the report on his X account with a pointed challenge to the Taliban’s leadership. “If these reports are false, why do you refuse to allow an independent, transparent, and impartial investigation?” he wrote. “Why are prisons and detention centers sealed off from international fact-finding missions? Taliban leaders cannot hold all power, control every institution, and make every decision in the name of the Emirate and Sharia, while simultaneously claiming no responsibility for what these allegations describe.”
He pressed further. “Whatever takes place inside Afghanistan’s prisons and detention centers is ultimately the responsibility of a leadership that claims absolute authority over the country and demands blind obedience from its people,” he wrote. “But this question is not for the Taliban alone. It must also be put to those clerics who mount their pulpits daily to speak of the lawful and the forbidden, of almsgiving and charity, of the miswak and the beard, yet fall silent before allegations of this magnitude.”
Mr. Nabil concluded: “Truth cannot be buried under imprisonment, censorship, threats, and fear. The day will come when the curtains are pulled back, and reality is exposed. On that day, people will judge who stood with truth and justice, and who stood with power and silence.”
Dawood Naji, head of the political committee of the Afghanistan Freedom Front (AFF), wrote that what the United Nations has documented is merely the tip of an enormous iceberg. The suppression of free and independent media, widespread fear of Taliban repression, and a deeply entrenched culture of concealing assault to protect family honor have together ensured that the vast majority of Taliban crimes remain hidden, he said.
The UNSC’s latest report states that 16 women and six girls were subjected to sexual violence by Taliban members in 2025. Documented cases include gang rape, forced marriage, and forced undressing. The report also notes that some women have taken their own lives as a result of the severe physical and psychological trauma they endured.
The Hasht-e Subh Daily had previously revealed, in an investigative report, that during the first two years of Taliban rule, 90 women across three northern provinces were arrested and imprisoned by the Taliban. Sixteen of those women became pregnant as a result of repeated sexual assault and subsequently sought abortions at local hospitals.
The investigation found that in Faryab and Samangan provinces, pregnancies were terminated on Taliban orders during the third and fifth months. Female prisoners in the north were coerced under Taliban pressure into fulfilling the sexual demands of local Taliban officials against their will. One released prisoner told the Hasht-e Subh Daily that at least four female prisoners in Samangan province became critically ill following repeated sexual assault by Taliban members and were ultimately executed by the Taliban.
You can read the Persian version of this report here:
واکنشها به گزارش شورای امنیت؛ تجاوزهای جنسی طالبان گسترده و تکاندهندهتر است
