Today marks two years since the Taliban took power by force in Afghanistan.

Since then, the Taliban have escalated their systematic war on women, resulting in the erasure of women from public life, and a violently enforced gender apartheid.  

Afghanistan’s long persecuted Hazara people, who have never known safety whilst the Taliban have ruled in Afghanistan, have faced increased and ongoing targeting and deliberate  persecution both at the hands of the Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP).  

People in regions which have historically resisted the Taliban’s control such as the Tajik-dominated Panjshir Province have been subjected to war crimes of collective punishment, unlawful killings, arbitrary detentions, and torture at the hands of the Taliban. There are also credible reports of the Taliban targeting ethnic Uzbek and Turkmen and forcibly displacing them from their ancestral lands in northern Afghanistan. 

In the last two years, Afghanistan has become one of the worlds’ worst humanitarian crises, with 28 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, including 3.2 million children under the age of 5 who are acutely malnourished.

Australia was one of the first nations to join the war in Afghanistan, and the war in Afghanistan became the  longest war in our nation’s history. In those years that we were in Afghanistan, we made promises to the people of Afghanistan about protection of human rights and the rights of women, minorities and persecuted groups. 

The Australian government has an ongoing moral obligation to the people of Afghanistan and in particular women, and persecuted and ethnic minority groups.

The Action for Afghanistan campaign calls on the Albanese government to condemn the gender-apartheid imposed on women in Afghanistan and the systematic persecution of ethnic groups such as the Hazara people. We also call on the Australian Government to  work with the UN and the international community to ensure Australia’s foreign aid contribution to Afghanistan is distributed in a non-discriminatory, equitable manner and reaches those in need.

The government must also urgently increase its humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan including through increased, and expedited humanitarian visas.