A recent report from the United Nations Women’s Section indicates that Afghanistan remains among the countries with no available data on the presence of women in its political structures.
The UN Women’s Section published a report titled “Women in Politics 2026,” which examines the status of women’s participation in the political power structures of 190 countries. Afghanistan is categorized alongside Guinea and Myanmar in the section labeled “exceptional circumstances or lack of accessible data.”
According to the findings of this report, while the global average of women’s representation in parliaments reaches 27.4%, Afghanistan, due to the absence of an active parliament and the lack of official information, has not been ranked in the global standings for women’s presence in legislative bodies.
In this ranking, Rwanda holds the top position, with 63.8% of parliamentary seats allocated to women. Cuba follows with 57.2%, and Nicaragua comes next with 55%.
The report also reveals that Afghanistan has been removed from the list of countries regarding women’s representation in government cabinets, alongside North Korea and Myanmar, as there is no accessible information about women’s presence in their cabinets.
Before the return of the interim government to power in 2021, women held approximately 27% of the seats in Afghanistan’s House of Representatives, equivalent to 68 seats out of a total of 250 designated for women according to the constitution. However, women are now excluded from all formal political decision-making structures.
Additionally, this report shows that globally, women’s presence in the highest political offices remains limited; only 10.6% of countries have a female head of state, and 10.9% have a female prime minister.
Meanwhile, women’s rights experts have repeatedly warned that the complete exclusion of women from political power structures has made Afghanistan one of the few countries in the world where women have no official role in political decision-making processes and public representation; a situation that has significantly widened the gap between this country and global trends in women’s political participation.
