Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have forcibly disappeared six staff members of the nongovernmental group Women and Children Legal Research Foundation (WCLRF) for nearly a month, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Taliban have provided no information on the whereabouts of the organization's leadership team, who were arrested in Kabul on July 18, 2026. The Women and Children Legal Research Foundation delivers assistance programs and conducts research and advocacy on women and children's rights. The Taliban authorities should permit family members and legal counsel to visit those detained, and they should be immediately released unless they have been charged with a recognizable offense.
"The Taliban seems to consider any effort to assist women and girls a threat to their abusive rule," said Macarena Sáez, women's rights director at Human Rights Watch. "They should immediately provide information on the six staff members' whereabouts and release them if held unlawfully."
On June 21, Taliban security forces raided the office of the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation in Kabul and confiscated laptops and phones from staff members. An informed source told Human Rights Watch that the security forces searched the office, sealed it, and, in subsequent weeks, interrogated staff members about their work.
On July 18, Taliban officials ordered six male staff members to return to the organization's office to collect their confiscated devices. Instead, all six were taken into custody. Family members of the detained men said that Taliban officials have not provided any information regarding their whereabouts, condition, or any charges they may be facing.
"Their families are living in constant fear and uncertainty," said Zarqa Yaftali, the foundation's former director, who now runs a sister organization in Canada.
Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban has steadily stripped away the rights of women and girls, including blocking girls from education beyond sixth grade, imposing severe restrictions on women's right to work, severely limiting women's freedom of movement, removing minimum age requirements for child marriage, and making domestic violence punishable only in cases in which the woman "has suffered a broken bone or visible injuries."
Taliban officials have provided no information on the reasons for these arrests. However, they have long targeted women journalists, women's rights defenders, and women protesting for their rights. Many have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, forcibly disappeared-sometimes for weeks, held in abusive conditions, and tortured.
International law defines an enforced disappearance as the detention of anyone by de facto authorities or their agents who then refuse to acknowledge the detention or whereabouts of the person, placing them outside the protection of the law. In August 2025, United Nations human rights experts, including the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, highlighted concerns about "wide-ranging human rights violations, including a disturbing surge in … acts tantamount to enforced disappearances" in Afghanistan.
While the UN Human Rights Council in October 2025 adopted a landmark resolution creating an independent mechanism to investigate past and ongoing rights abuses in Afghanistan, the overall response of other governments to the human rights crisis in Afghanistan has been inadequate.
Iran and Pakistan have forced millions of Afghans to return to the country, where they are at risk of persecution and mistreatment. Since resuming deportation flights in August 2024, Germany has actively pursued increased deportations to Afghanistan despite the serious risks that returned Afghans continue to face. On June 22, European Union officials hosted a Taliban delegation for the first time in Brussels to discuss migration issues.
"Governments should be pressing the Taliban about deepening repression against women and detaining and disappearing human rights defenders," Sáez said. "Instead, some governments are engaging with the Taliban to increase deportations that would put those returned at risk."
