Women’s rights in Afghanistan

The world’s attention is limited. Today’s burning emergency becomes tomorrow’s forgotten crisis. When the media spotlight moves on, vital issues in development and humanitarian response risk being forgotten. In this podcast miniseries, Development Initiatives’ (DI’s) CEO Adrian Lovett speaks with people with deep expertise to take us beyond the headlines and explore the missing issues, missing voices and missing data as we ask: What are we missing?

In this episode, we turn our attention to the situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan. In August 2021, Kabul, was captured by the Taliban after 20 years of war with an international military coalition led by the US. Chaotic scenes during the fall of Kabul were viewed by huge audiences around the world, but nearly three years on, media coverage of Afghanistan is far more muted. According to Human Rights Watch, since returning to power the Taliban have created the world’s most serious women’s rights crisis, and the economic and humanitarian situation remains extremely fragile. So what are we missing about the situation in Afghanistan today? And what does the future hold?

Our guests are:

• Horia Mosadiq, an Afghan women’s rights defender, journalist and researcher with more than 20 years’ experience covering human rights, politics, transitional justice and conflict analysis in Afghanistan. Among other things, Horia is a founder of the Conflict Analysis Network, a research, advocacy and capacity-building think thank focusing on violent extremism and radicalisation, and their impact on human rights.
• Heather Barr, Associate Director, Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Heather joined Human Rights Watch in 2011 in Kabul as the Afghanistan researcher, after working for the UN on human rights and legal reform in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi and Jordan. She has researched women and girls’ rights in many other countries across the world.

For more on the issues covered in this episode:

• Watch Horia Mosadiq deliver the Front Line Defenders Annual Lecture: How Afghan Women are Defying the Taliban (forthcoming)
• Read this article by Heather Barr, The Taliban and the Global Backlash Against Women’s Rights
• Read this report by the International Rescue Committee with support from DI, Why Wait? How the Humanitarian System Can Better Fund Women-Led and Women’s Rights Organisations

What are we missing? is a production of Development Initiatives, a global organisation harnessing the power of data and evidence to end poverty, reduce inequality and increase resilience. All views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Development Initiatives.

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