Gender apartheid in Afghanistan: resistance also unfolds through everyday gestures

In 2024, 676 million women and girls were living in areas besieged by war (at most 50 km away), a condition that exposed them to a higher risk of sexual violence used for military purposes. In September 2025, the United Nations reported that this type of abuse had increased by 87% in two years.

When we talk about gender-based violence as a weapon of war, we refer to all forms of abuse perpetrated against women because they are women, with the aim of weakening and humiliating the enemy (men). UN Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) recognizes sexual violence as a specific military weapon and tactic, stating that rape and other forms of sexual abuse may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

However, we are not only talking about physical violence, rape and sexual slavery, but also about the violation of the freedoms of women and girls — which is exactly what is happening in Afghanistan. “If girls are told that after the age of 10 they will no longer be able to go to school, those girls are being denied the right to learn and to dream of a future,” said Silvia Redigolo, head of communications and fundraising at Pangea, a foundation that has been working in Afghanistan since 2003 to support women’s empowerment.

“If you live in a country that denies you the right to exist, you are also denied the possibility of building a future for yourself.”

How has Pangea’s work — and the condition of women in Afghanistan — changed since the Taliban returned in 2021?
The condition of women has always been a sensitive issue in the country. Since 2003, Pangea has been working alongside Afghan women to help them become aware of their rights and, through microcredit projects, to support them in starting an income-generating activity. It is a project that creates change, that guarantees a future for women, their families and their communities — and one that we were certainly able to carry out more easily before 2021. Today, Afghan women are living under a system of gender apartheid: when girls are denied education and women are forbidden to work or to show their faces, inviolable rights are being denied. Since 2021, our work has changed completely: we continue to operate in the country, but the situation is not simple because every day brings new Taliban decrees and new restrictions.

How is it possible that media and institutional attention on Afghanistan — and especially on the violation of women’s rights — has declined?
Media attention was very high in August 2021 and in the months that followed, but today it has undeniably decreased. In February 2022, a new conflict broke out — in Europe, moreover — and attention automatically shifted there. Afterwards, other wars erupted around the world. The resistance of Afghan women is no longer made visible, even though they continue to fight against the violation of their rights. In September 2025, a devastating earthquake struck the eastern part of the country, causing more than 2,000 deaths and razing many villages to the ground. There were women who received no assistance because the only men available to work at that moment were not allowed to touch them. Yet we heard very little about it.

What stories of women’s resistance has Pangea collected?
The resistance of the women involved in Pangea’s project is rooted in the work they carry out inside their homes. A woman who bakes bread and then gives it to her small children to sell is resisting. She works at home, but she is resisting. The hands of a woman who embroiders because it is the only way she can feed her children as a widow are hands that do not give up — they resist. Resistance unfolds through simple gestures and everyday stories, but they are the stories of strong women who do not want to give up and cannot give up, for themselves and for their daughters. When a mother leaves her home to sell the bread she bakes because her children are too young to do it, or because her husband has a disability, or because she is a widow, that woman is resisting — while at the same time risking her life. These stories must be communicated, shouted out loud, because Afghan women currently have no voice on the international stage.

Photo credit: Fondazione Pangea ETS