On August 31, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan, devastating the provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar, Laghman, Nuristan, and Panjshir. Entire villages have been reduced to rubble, with many families buried beneath collapsed homes. According to Politico, more than 1,469 people have been killed, at least 3,700 injured, and over 8,000 houses destroyed. Reuters called it Afghanistan’s deadliest quake in years.
Yet behind these grim figures lies a deeper tragedy: women, girls, and children have borne the brunt of the disaster because they live under the suffocating weight of the Taliban’s gender apartheid.
Since their return to power, the Taliban have dismantled nearly every basic right Afghan women once had: education, employment, healthcare, and even the freedom to appear in public. In December 2024, the Taliban regime banned female medical training, eliminating the last pathway for women to serve as nurses and midwives. Most female doctors have fled or been barred from practice, while the remaining male doctors are prohibited from treating women. Many clinics stand empty; provincial hospitals are inaccessible or closed to female patients without a male guardian.
After the quake, many women have been unable to seek care – especially where the male relatives required to escort them have been themselves killed or injured. A natural disaster has thus become a man-made atrocity in which women and children have been left to die from treatable injuries.
The earthquake also underscores a broader, long-running crisis: gender apartheid itself drives displacement. Families are not fleeing only war and poverty – they are fleeing the erasure of women’s existence. Mothers barred from hospitals, daughters denied education, and widows unable to move without a male guardian face impossible choices. Many risk perilous journeys abroad, only to be forcibly repatriated by Pakistan and Iran into the very conditions they escaped. Today, more than 10 million Afghans are displaced inside and outside the country, the majority women and children, whose only “offense” is being female under Taliban rule.
International law has begun to respond. The International Criminal Court recently issued arrest warrants for Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging them with crimes against humanity through gender-based persecution. These are the first such warrants under the Rome Statute, a milestone in recognizing gender persecution. Yet without enforcement, such steps remain symbolic, while the slow violence of apartheid continues unchecked. What is unfolding in Afghanistan may rightly be described as genocide by neglect – enacted not through massacres, but through systematic deprivation and the denial of women’s right to live with dignity.
Meanwhile, the Taliban have pleaded for international aid after the earthquake. As The Washington Post reports, the United Nations has released $10 million in emergency funds, with additional pledges from the European Union, United Kingdom, India, and the UAE. But money and supplies alone cannot overcome barriers the Taliban themselves impose. Aid without access simply perpetuates inequality. What Afghanistan needs is not only resources, but conditions that guarantee women’s right to receive them.
The international response must therefore be urgent and uncompromising. Female-led medical missions should be deployed, humanitarian corridors established, and all aid conditioned on gender-inclusive delivery. Beyond relief, the world must codify gender apartheid as a crime under international law, on par with racial apartheid, to ensure accountability is binding rather than optional.
The suffering in Afghanistan is not inevitable. It is the direct result of policies that strip women of their humanity. Unless the world acts with resolve, every disaster – whether natural or man-made – will continue to claim Afghan women and children first.