The 300-plus reported cases of Afghan women being killed by men since the Taliban seized power are just “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the true scale of gender-based violence in Afghanistan, according to new data analysis.
Open-source investigators at the Centre of Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project combed through social media and news sites to record 332 reported cases of femicide since the Taliban took Kabul on August 15, 2021.
The analysis found 840 women and girls had been subject to gender-based violence from January 1, 2022 – when Afghan Witness began collating data – to June 30 this year.
More than half of the reported cases said that Taliban officials were responsible.
The Taliban’s shutdown of most independent media outlets and the widespread restriction and persecution of journalists – as well as continuing political repression and online intimidation – means that the number of cases reported is likely to be a vast underestimation of the true scale of death and violence inflicted on Afghan women.
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