Melissa Cornet details Taliban restrictions erasing Afghan women on fifth anniversary
Aug 15, 2026
The FRANCE 24 segment marks the fifth anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Kabul, featuring independent researcher Melissa Cornet live from Kabul. She describes a declared holiday with Taliban celebrations that exclude the 21 million Afghan women and girls barred from public life, citing a new UN Women report that half of interviewed women now leave home only once or twice a month due to restrictions and fear. Cornet contrasts her relative freedom as a foreign woman with Afghan women's plight, notes some rural and Taliban-family women welcomed the end of decades-long war despite economic woes and school bans, and discusses the "gender apartheid" campaign to codify it as a crime under a prospective UN convention.
The interview covers the slow rollout of over 100 restrictive decrees since 2021, internal Taliban differences unlikely to yield change soon, limited impact of sanctions, ICC arrest warrants for the supreme leader, and Western abandonment in 2021. Sourcing relies on Cornet's years of on-the-ground research, interviews (including with Taliban families in conservative provinces), and references to UN Women, with no opposing Taliban or male Afghan voices.
