Afghan Leaders and Allies Demand Women's Seat at the Negotiating Table

At a packed UN General Assembly side event, Afghan diplomats, former heads of state and international experts delivered a unified message: no credible peace process in Afghanistan can exclude women from the room where decisions are made. The two-hour forum surfaced hard data — 2.4 million girls banned from school, an estimated $920 million economic cost, and a country ranked dead last on the Women, Peace and Security Index — while channeling sharp criticism at the Security Council for what speakers called complicity through inaction.

• Afghan and international experts reject victim framing, insisting women must sit as political decision-makers in any peace process

• Calls mount to codify gender apartheid in international law, with activists warning the failure to do so after 1996 allowed the current crisis to recur

• 2.4 million girls locked out of education as Afghanistan remains the only country to officially ban women from schooling beyond sixth grade

• Former Iceland PM warns of normalization, citing 75% of women-led organizations hit by funding cuts in 2025

• Former UN official challenges the Security Council, calling its unchanged UNAMA mandate a form of acquiescence

• Afghan civil society leaders call for an umbrella political structure to unite fragmented movements and prevent a repeat of the Bonn conference's elite power-sharing

The panel — organized by the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan and the Afghanistan Policy Lab at Princeton University — spent over an hour building a case that the international community has fundamentally misjudged its role in Afghanistan by focusing on whether to engage or isolate the Taliban while ignoring the 40 million Afghans living under its rule.