By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 2025 – Nearly four years ago, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan and issued a series of edicts that significantly restricted women’s rights nationwide. This has resulted in a multifaceted humanitarian crisis, one marked by a notable decline in civic freedoms, stunted national development, and a widespread lack of basic services.

On June 17, UN-Women published its 2024 Afghanistan Gender Index, a comprehensive report that details the gender disparities and worsening humanitarian conditions for women and girls across the country. According to the report, the edicts issued by the Taliban have restricted women’s rights to the point that women and girls in the country have fallen far below the global benchmarks for human development.

“Since [2021], we have witnessed a deliberate and unprecedented assault on the rights, dignity and very existence of Afghan women and girls. And yet, despite near-total restrictions on their lives, Afghan women persevere,” said Sofia Calltorp, UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action. “The issue of gender inequality in Afghanistan didn’t start with the Taliban. Their institutionalised discrimination is layered on top of deep-rooted barriers that also hold women back.”

It is estimated that women in Afghanistan have 76 percent fewer rights than men in areas such as health, education, financial independence, and decision-making. In addition, Afghan women are afforded, on average, 17 percent of their rights while women worldwide have 60.7 percent.

This disparity is projected to further widen following the Taliban’s ban on women holding positions in the health sector, removing one of the final strongholds for female autonomy in Afghanistan. Today, roughly 78 percent of Afghan women lack access to any form of formal education, employment, or training, nearly four times the rate for Afghan men. UN Women projects that the rate of secondary school completion for girls will soon fall to zero percent for girls and women.

Furthermore, Afghanistan has one of the widest workforce gaps in the world, with 89 percent of men having roles in the labour force, compared to 24 percent of women. Women are more likely to work in domestic roles and have lower-paying, more insecure jobs. Additionally, there are zero women that hold roles in national or local decision-making bodies, effectively excluding them entirely from having their voices heard on a governmental level.

“Afghanistan’s greatest resource is its women and girls,” said UN Women’s Executive Director Sima Bahous. “Their potential continues to be untapped, yet they persevere. Afghan women are supporting each other, running businesses, delivering humanitarian aid and speaking out against injustice. Their courage and leadership are reshaping their communities, even in the face of immense restrictions.”

The exclusion of all Afghan women from the workforce has had significant impacts on the local economy. According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG), since 2021 Afghanistan’s economy has seen losses of up to 1 billion USD per year, representing roughly 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. This has led to an overall increase in poverty levels and food insecurity.

“Overlapping economic, political, and humanitarian crises — all with women’s rights at their core — have pushed many households to the brink. In response – often out of sheer necessity — more women are entering the workforce,” Calltorp said.

Furthermore, women in Afghanistan lack any form of economic independence. UN Women estimates that only 6.8 percent of women have access to basic financial resources such as bank accounts and mobile money services. Edicts that prevent women from accessing financial independence will leave the vast majority of Afghan women unequipped for a self-sustainable future.

Afghanistan has also seen a significant surge in rates of gender-based violence since the Taliban’s rise to power. According to the report, Afghan women are exposed to nearly three times the global average rates of intimate-partner violence. Other practices, such as forced and child marriages and honor killings, exacerbate the national levels of gender inequality. Amnesty International states that non-compliance often results in retaliation from the Taliban, with women and girls facing arrests, rape, and torture.

In November 2023, Afghanistan’s de-facto Ministry of Public Health banned women’s access to psychosocial support services, leaving the vast majority of victims of gender-based violence without the adequate resources to recover while perpetrators receive impunity. Additionally, the elimination of women’s healthcare, including women’s access to reproductive health and education services, has made it difficult for many women to find basic care.

Due to these challenges, UN Women believes that Afghan women are less likely than men to live the majority of their lives in good health. It is estimated that the life expectancy of Afghan women is far lower than the global average and is projected to worsen in the coming years.

According to CIVICUS Global Alliance, current civic space conditions in Afghanistan are listed as “closed”, representing one of the worst environments for civic freedoms in the world. Josef Benedict, the Monitor Asia Researcher of CIVICUS, states that the women’s rights issues in Afghanistan have deteriorated to the point that it resembles a “gender apartheid”.

“There has been severe repression and systemic gender-based discrimination faced by Afghan women and girls under the Taliban. Women and girls are being systematically erased from public life and are being denied fundamental human rights, including access to employment, education, and opportunities for political and social engagement,” said Benedict.

“The international community must do more to provide support for women and girls in and from Afghanistan by calling for dismantling of the institutionalized system of gender oppression, ensure the representative, equal, meaningful and safe participation of Afghan women in all discussions concerning the country’s future and support community-led initiatives promoting gender equality and women’s rights.”

Additionally, activists and dissenters are routinely punished by the Taliban, facing harassment, intimidation, and violence. Journalists are often targeted, underscoring the risks of speaking out against a repressive government in an increasingly volatile environment.

“The rating is also due to the crackdown on press freedom,” said Benedict. “Nearly four years on, governments have failed to ensure a strong, united international response to counter the Taliban’s extreme repression, take steps to hold the Taliban accountable or to effectively support Afghan activists in the country and those in exile.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

By Maximilian Malawista
NEW YORK, Jun 23 2025 – Afghanistan is burdened with one of the highest rates of child wasting globally, with 3.5 million children under five years suffering from a severe form of malnutrition, leaving them dangerously underweight and unable to grow or thrive.

With only five years left to meet global nutrition targets, progress remains unpromising: with only two goals, exclusive breastfeeding and reducing child obesity on track. This leaves the nation “not on course” to meet all of the nutrition-related SDGs, as outlined by the 2023 Global Nutrition Report.

Approximately 12.6 million Afghans, 27 percent of the population, were facing acute food insecurity between March and April 2025, with 1.95 million in IPC phase 4 (Emergency), and 10.64 million in phase 3 (Crisis). Additionally 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are affected by this acute malnutrition, which has been driven by “inadequate access to services, sub-optimum practices and inadequate diets due to economic decline, climate shocks, rising food prices, and poor resilience” according to UNICEF.

According to a 2024 UNICEF report on child food poverty and nutrition deprivation, Afghanistan ranked 4th globally among countries with the highest rates of child poverty.

Nine out of ten young children in Afghanistan, or approximately 2.1 million, live in food poverty, which is leading to stunted growth and development. In this same age group, for one out of every two children (1.2 million children), diets were subsisting of no more than two food groups, “typically cereals and, at times, some milk, day in and day out”. Inadequate dietary requirements has caused 47 percent of young children in Afghanistan to suffer from stunting, with only 14.8 percent consuming five or more food groups. As a result, over 5 million children have been affected by stunted growth (IPC AMN).

While malnutrition is still significant, the UN has made progress in “scaling up the prevention and management of child nutrition in Afghanistan”. About 6.5 million children with wasting have received treatment over the last 3 years. Additionally over 10 million children and their caregivers were receiving preventive nutrition services. This has been marked as an achievement, highlighting “the impact of sustained and focused action, supported by adequate funding”.

A System of Rebuilding:

In Afghanistan, a shepherd guides his flock through barren land. Credit: Unsplash/Mustafa

An investment in nutrition has been found to yield a high return investment, benefiting social, health, and economic systems. For every 1 dollar spent on addressing undernutrition and child wasting, a return of 23 dollars is generated. Malnutrition accounts for USD 2.1 trillion in annual productivity losses, a margin of 2 percent of the global GDP.

To address the remainder of global nutrition targets in Afghanistan, UN agencies such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), have called for a “coordinated, multisectoral action to nutrition”. Involving “strengthening food, agriculture, health and nutrition, water and sanitation” and even offering “social protection and education systems” in the fight to prevent, detect, and treat child wasting along with early forms of malnutrition.

In the report Nourishing Afghanistan: A UN Call to Accelerate Nutrition Action, the UN outlined a 10-step strategy to meet the global nutrition targets, in an attempt to combat malnutrition and its side effects. These include:

1. Strengthen strategies to address malnutrition
2. Ensure Access to Essential Preventive Maternal and Child Nutrition Services
3. Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition
4. Tackle Child Food Poverty and population food insecurity by Improving
Access to Healthy, Nutritious Diets through strengthening Food Systems
5. Integrated Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) and
climate-sensitive, multisectoral resilience building Initiatives
6. Strengthen Social Protection Systems
7. Increase Nutritional Education & Awareness
8. Leverage Data and evidence for Nutrition Action in Afghanistan
9. Investing on Nutrition in Afghanistan
10. Multisectoral Coordination

One such initiative, ‘First Foods Afghanistan‘, offers a direct systems-based response, linking food, water and sanitation health (WASH), education, health and social protection systems in order to deliver nutritious “first foods” for every child in Afghanistan.

The initiative looks to improve young children’s diets. Dr. Tajudeen Oyewale, the UNICEF Representative for Afghanistan said: “Afghanistan should not only be growing food—it must now grow nutrition. We are shifting the focus from calories to nourishment through child sensitive food systems, and from addressing malnutrition solely through services to also prioritizing the actual foods young children consume. This integrated approach is the only sustainable path to breaking the cycle of malnutrition and poverty in Afghanistan.”

Initiatives like First Foods Afghanistan have played a vital role in the strategy to combat the nutrition deficit in some of the country’s most impoverished regions. This accelerated action becomes even more critical as the brunt of the crisis is mostly affecting women and children, creating non-optimal conditions for growth and development.

As John AYLIEFF, WFP Country Director for Afghanistan warned: “Women and children bear the brunt of the hunger crisis in Afghanistan, where four out of five families cannot afford minimally nutritious diets.” He added: “Without sustained food assistance, millions of Afghans will descend into deeper hunger and acute malnutrition.”

IPS UN Bureau

By Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Jun 23 2025 – Twenty years ago, one day in June 2005, I talked with an Iranian man who was selling underwear at the Tehran Grand Bazaar. People all over the world want peace, he said, but governments won’t let them have it.

I thought of that conversation on Saturday night after the U.S. government attacked nuclear sites in Iran. For many days before that, polling clearly showed that most Americans did not want the United States to attack Iran.

“Only 16 percent of Americans think the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran,” YouGov pollsters reported, while “60 percent say it should not and 24 percent are not sure.”

But as a practical matter, democracy has nothing to do with the chokehold that the warfare state has on the body politic. That reality has everything to do with why the United States can’t kick the war habit. And that’s why the profound quests for peace and genuine democracy are so tightly intertwined.

On Saturday evening, President Trump delivered a speech exuding might-makes-right thuggery on a global scale: “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.”

More than ever, the United States and Israel are overt partners in what the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 called “the supreme international crime” – “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression.”

Naturally, the perpetrators of the supreme international crime are eager to festoon themselves in mutual praise. As Trump put it in his speech, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before.” And Trump added: “I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”

A grisly and nefarious truth is that, in effect, the Israeli military functions as part of the overall U.S. military machine. The armed forces of each country have different command structures and sometimes have tactical disagreements.

But in the Middle East, from Gaza and Iran to Lebanon and Syria, “cooperation” does not begin to describe how closely and with common purpose they work together.

More than 20 months into Israel’s U.S.-armed siege of Gaza, the genocide there continues as a joint American-Israeli project. It is a project that would have been literally impossible to sustain without the weapons and bombs that the U.S. government has continued to provide to the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.

The same U.S.-Israel alliance that has been committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has also enabled the escalation of KKK-like terrorizing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in the West Bank. The ethnocentric arrogance and racism involved in U.S. support for these crimes have been longstanding, and worsening along with the terrible events.

The same alliance is now also terrorizing Iranian society from the air.

As we have seen yet again in recent hours, the political and media culture of the United States is heavily inclined toward glorifying the use of the USA’s second-to-none destructive air power. As if above it all. The conceit of American exceptionalism assumes that “we” have the sanctified moral ground to proceed in the world with a basic de facto message powered by military might: Do as we say, not as we do.

While all this is going on, the word “surreal” is apt to be heard. But a much more fitting word is “real.”

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction,” James Baldwin wrote, “and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

Now, people in the United States have real-time historic opportunities – to do everything we can to take nonviolent action demanding that the U.S. government end its monstrous role in the Middle East.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, includes an afterword about the Gaza war.

IPS UN Bureau

By Tanka Dhakal
BLOOMINGTON, USA, Jun 23 2025 – Asia is heading towards more extreme weather events with a possibility of heavy toll on the region’s economies, ecosystems, and societies, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The WMO’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report released today says Asia is currently warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, fueling more disaster-prone weather events.

In 2024, Asia’s average temperature was about 1.04°C above the 1991–2020 average, ranking as the warmest or second warmest year on record, depending on the dataset. The warming trend between 1991 and 2024 was almost double that during the 1961 to 1990 period.

Report highlights the changes in key climate indicators, including surface temperature, glacier mass, and sea level, which will have major impacts in the region. “Extreme weather is already exacting an unacceptably high toll,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

In 2024, heatwaves gripped a record area of the ocean. Sea surface temperatures were the highest on record, with Asia’s sea surface 10 years period warming rate nearly double the global average.

Report says that sea level rise on the Pacific and Indian Ocean sides of the continent exceeded the global average, increasing risks for low-lying coastal areas.

“The work of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and their partners is more important than ever to save lives and livelihoods,” Saulo said.

Asia land temperatures. Source: World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Water Resources Are in Danger and Causing Destruction

State of the glaciers, which are regarded as water storage for most of the region, is facing an existential threat. Reduced winter snowfall and extreme summer heat caused decisive damage to glaciers in the central Himalayas and Tian Shan Mountain range. 23 out of 24 glaciers suffered mass loss, leading to an increase in hazards like glacial lake outburst floods and landslides and long-term risks for water security.

The High-Mountain Asia (HMA) region, centered on the Tibetan Plateau, contains the largest volume of ice outside the polar regions, with glaciers covering an area of approximately 100,000 square km. It is known as the world’s Third Pole. Over the last several decades, most glaciers in this region have been retreating. Which is increasing the risk of glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

Community in Thame village in the Mt. Everest region in Nepal is still recovering from the disaster caused by a small glacial lake outburst flood in August 2024, while living in fear of a similar disaster.

From the high Himalayas to coastal areas in Asia experiencing destructive weather events. Extreme rainfall caused great damage and heavy casualties in many countries in the region, tropical cyclones left a trail of destruction, and drought added heavy economic and agricultural losses.

The report included a case study from Nepal, showing how important early warning systems and anticipatory actions are to prepare for and respond to climate variability and change. In late September 2024, Nepal experienced heavy rainfall that led to severe flooding and landslides across the country.

According to the government data, the disaster claimed at least 246 lives and left 218 people missing. Damages to energy infrastructure are estimated at 4.35 billion Nepali rupees, while the agricultural sector faced a loss equivalent to 6 billion Nepali rupees. Reports note that early warning systems and preparation for anticipatory actions helped limit human casualties. But the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) in Nepal highlighted the urgent need for a tailored, impact-based flood forecasting system at the national level.

Extreme heat events

In many parts of Asia, extreme heat is becoming a concerning issue as countries like India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan in South Asia are already dealing with heat waves. In 2024, prolonged heat waves affected East Asia from April to November.

According to the report, Asia is the continent with the largest landmass extending to the Arctic and is warming more than twice as fast as the global average because the temperature increase over land is larger than the temperature increase over the ocean.

In 2024, most of the ocean area of Asia was affected by marine heatwaves of strong, severe, or extreme intensity—the largest extent since records began in 1993.  During August and September 2024, nearly 15 million square kilometers of the region’s ocean were impacted—one-tenth of the Earth’s entire ocean surface.

“The purpose of the report is not only to inform. It is to inspire action,” said president of WMO Regional Association Dr. Ayman Ghulam.

He highlighted the need for stronger early warning systems, regional collaboration, and greater investments in adapting transboundary water and climate risk management.

“We must ensure that modern science guides decision-making at every level,” Ghulam said.

IPS UN Bureau Report