The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has announced that the de facto authorities, in late August of this year, closed religious schools for girls in several provinces.
In a newly released report, the mission stated that in August 2025, the current government shut down three religious schools in Kabul for allegedly “violating hijab regulations, teaching regular school subjects, and admitting girls above grade six.”
According to the report, government officials in the provinces of Paktika and Badakhshan also refrained from “admitting girls over the ages of 10 and 13 to religious schools” in late August.
UNAMA further emphasized that during the three months covered by the report, it documented at least 456 cases of arrests and detentions and 44 cases of mistreatment of women and men by the so-called Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The UN mission noted that individuals were arrested and mistreated for reasons such as “styling hair or beards in a Western fashion, playing or listening to music, and failing to observe the hijab.”
According to the report, between July and September of this year, government authorities publicly flogged 263 people, including 209 men and 54 women, across several provinces.
The report added that over the past four years, the current authorities have issued more than 80 decrees aimed at restricting the rights and freedoms of women and girls.
Since taking power, the government has banned women and girls from education. In its most recent restriction, it closed medical institutes to female students, despite a nationwide shortage of healthcare workers.
This policy has left millions of girls deprived of education.
In addition, women are banned from going to gyms, restaurants, public baths, being examined by male doctors, traveling without a male guardian, and working with national and international NGOs — including UN offices in Afghanistan.
