Domestic violence under the Taliban’s rule: Afghanistan failed Hasina and millions of women and girls

A young Afghan woman’s death exposes the devastating consequences of systemic violence

On Tuesday, 11th August 2026, Hasina, a 22-year-old Afghan woman, lost her life after approximately a year of severe domestic violence at the hands of members of her husband’s family. The unbearable, prolonged abuse she experienced eventually led her to take her own life after she saw no other way to escape the situation she had been forced to endure.

At first glance, Hasina’s death may appear simply as suicide. However, a closer look at what happened changes this perspective: Was that truly her only choice? In other words, if Hasina had any other way out of the prolonged physical and psychological abuse she had been continuously subjected to, would she have made the same decision? 

“I do not see Hasina’s death as simply a suicide,” says Jamil Bedil, Hasina’s uncle, who describes her death as “the tragic result of violence, oppression and a complete failure to protect her.”

In that sense, he sees Hasina’s death as “a killing caused by violence and oppression, even if the final act was carried out by her own hand.”

Afghan women have no safe way out of an abusive marriage

“Hasina had her whole life ahead of her. She was going to school and had dreams and ambitions, like millions of other Afghan girls. But when the Taliban took power and banned girls from secondary education, her future was taken away from her,” Bedil says. 

In February 2026, the Taliban’s De Facto Authorities (DFA) issued the “Criminal Procedure Regulation of the Courts,” which effectively legitimises certain forms of domestic violence, allowing husbands to physically punish their wives as long as the violence does not result in “broken bones or serious visible injuries.”

The regulation comes alongside other measures that make marriage and separation increasingly unequal for women. In May 2026, the Taliban’s de facto Ministry of Justice published Decree No. 18, the “Code on Judicial Separation of Spouses”, regulating how marriages may be dissolved, without establishing a minimum age for marriage. 

In his report to the UN Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan in July 2026, UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett noted that Decree No. 18 traps women in violent households by establishing “almost insurmountable barriers for women seeking separation, particularly those experiencing intimate partner or family violence.” 

Under such a decree, a woman who seeks separation to leave an abusive marriage faces mandatory arbitration and is denied separation if courts decide the abuse can be prevented through other means. These conditions, according to Bennett, “make it almost, if not entirely, impossible for women, especially those in abusive relationships, to obtain separation.”

The legal Advisor for South Asia at Equality Now, Michelle Shahid, believes that in the past five years, the Taliban have dismantled nearly every protection Afghan women had against violence, including violence inside the home. “Decree No. 12, issued earlier this year, criminalises severe beatings by a husband against his wife, but only where they cause a ‘fracture, wound or bruising on the body’, with a penalty of mere 15 days’ imprisonment”, she said. “A wife must prove her claim before an all-male court, accompanied by a male guardian who is often the very husband she is trying to escape. The Taliban have also closed women’s shelters. Practically, this means that Afghan women have almost no way out of abusive marriages”. Accordingly, psychological and sexual violence within marriages remain unaddressed. 

With these compounding gender-discriminatory regulations, married women (and girls) are left with almost no way out. Rather, the law itself has become another barrier to their ability to break the cycle of an abusive marriage.

For Hasina, these restrictions had devastating consequences. Like many other Afghan girls, she was pushed towards marriage, where she was subjected to constant domestic violence that may have left her feeling that “death was her only way out”, according to her uncle. 

The patriarchal society is also part of the picture

Social pressure also plays a role, as divorce can be treated as a source of shame or dishonour, not only for the woman but for the whole family. Families may therefore pressure a daughter to remain in an abusive marriage rather than support her decision to leave. 

“Afghanistan is also a deeply patriarchal society in which women are often expected to tolerate abuse, violence and humiliation in silence to preserve a marriage,” Bedil adds. “The wider political situation made this even more difficult for Hasina. A woman escaping abuse, therefore, has far fewer realistic options and protections.”

“That is what makes her death so heartbreaking. It was not simply that she chose to die. It was the violence, social pressures, lack of protection and loss of freedom that had made her feel that living was no longer possible”, Bedil lamented.

Systemic oppression leaves Afghan women under severe mental health crisis

Hasina’s story cannot be separated from the wider conditions faced by many Afghan women and girls, who are experiencing serious mental health concerns. UN’s  Afghanistan country profile 2024 reports that 68% of respondents in a survey conducted in 2023 knew at least one woman or girl who had experienced anxiety or depression, while 8% knew at least one woman or girl who had attempted suicide since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Additionally, up to 80 % of people who died by suicide in Afghanistan in 2018 were women. 

The report primarily attributes the increase in suicide or suicidal ideation rates among Afghan women and girls to psychological distress due to restrictions on their rights and freedoms, in addition to domestic violence, absence of sufficient support for women survivors of abuse, and poverty as reasons for individual suicides. 

Another recent set of data released by the UN indicated that 7 in 10 women in Afghanistan describe their mental health as “bad” or “very bad”.

The question is therefore not only how Hasina died, but what made a young woman feel that death was her only way out.

“At such a young age, she had already gone through so much. She should have been studying, growing and preparing for a brighter future. Instead, she found herself in circumstances where, from her perspective, ending her life appeared to be the only escape”, says Hasina’s uncle, who believes that his niece was trapped and failed by everyone.

Five years of Taliban rule erases decades of progress for women and girls in Afghanistan

In the 20 years before the Taliban’s return to power, Afghanistan established a legal framework to advance gender equality, including the 2004 constitution which guaranteed equality between men and women, and the 2009 law that criminalised several forms of violence against women and girls, including child marriage, rape and beating, among 22 other forms of violence. 

However, with the Taliban back in power in 2021, this progress has been completely erased. Over the last five years, the Taliban’s De Facto Authorities have issued over 100 decrees primarily restricting “nearly every aspect of women and girls’ lives”, according to Equality Now’s reflection on “5 years of Taliban rule: Generations of progress erased for women and girls”. By imposing limitations on education, freedoms, healthcare access, and other aspects of life, the Taliban’s measures are systematically erasing women from public life. 

In July 2024, the de facto authorities issued the so-called law on promotion of virtue and prevention of vice (PVPV law), commonly known as the “Morality Law” which reinforced the systemic oppression of women and girls across Afghanistan. Under such a legal framework, women are required to cover their entire bodies and faces in public, and their voices are banned from being heard outside the home.  According to the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), “the accumulation of the discriminatory measures introduced by the Taliban, which restrict the rights and freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan, amounts to persecution”. 

Moreover, Afghanistan, under the Taliban’s rule, has violated its international obligations. In 2025,  the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Committee referred to the situation in Afghanistan as “one of the most severe reversals of women’s human rights ever recorded.” 

“As a brother to my sisters, who were banned from attending university and saw their dreams shattered while I could do nothing, and as an uncle to Hasina, who tragically felt she had no way out while I could do nothing to save her, I urge the international community to take stronger action,” says Bedil.

Hasina took her own life in August 2026, just days shy of the five-year mark of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. Her uncle believes that it is time for the international community to take serious action towards ending the Taliban’s systemic oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan. 

First published in Daraj Media