The Afghan Women’s Rights Watch expresses its deep concern over the Russian Federation’s decision to officially recognize the Taliban regime. Such recognition—if granted without clear preconditions and legal obligations for the Taliban to reform its treatment of women, minorities, and civil society—is effectively legitimizing a regime that has consistently imposed systematic repression, violence, and discrimination on the people of Afghanistan over the past four years.
The Taliban has shown no genuine intention to respect human dignity, freedom of expression, or women’s rights. What has been imposed on Afghanistan is not a legitimate government, but a rule built on violence, exclusion, and gender apartheid. Afghan women and girls have been its primary victims—banned from education and work, subjected to arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, and completely erased from public life.
We recognize that countries shape their foreign policies based on national interests and geopolitical calculations. However, we firmly call on the Russian Federation and all other governments engaging with the Taliban to:
– Make any formal relationship or recognition strictly conditional on tangible improvements in human rights, especially for women and minorities.
– Exert concrete pressure on the Taliban to enact structural reforms and end systematic oppression in Afghanistan.
– Amplify the voices of Afghan women globally and provide material support to independent women-led organizations and movements.
In the absence of a coherent political alternative within Afghanistan, the international community bears even greater responsibility to prevent humanitarian catastrophe and ongoing human rights abuses. History has shown that true legitimacy stems from the will of the people, from justice—not from political recognition rooted in short-term interests.
The Afghan Women’s Rights Watch, alongside all justice-seeking women and men of the country, will continue its civil and rights-based resistance. We will neither remain silent, nor accept compromise.
Afghan Women’s Rights Watch