By David Brunnstrom
Aug 14 (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed to donors on Friday not to cut funding for women's programs in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, saying this would add to suffering in a country where conditions for women are already the worst in the world.
Despite ever-deteriorating conditions for women five years after the Taliban's return to power, funding shortfalls mean more than half of 74 women's organizations surveyed in April are likely to have to suspend operations or close in the next
year, just when they are most needed, Susan Ferguson, U.N. Women's special representative in Afghanistan, told reporters.
Ferguson said the Taliban had imposed more than 100 decrees restricting women's rights since returning to power, affecting nearly every aspect of their daily lives, from education and employment to freedom of movement, healthcare and access to justice.
Girls are barred from secondary schools and universities, and more than half of 3,200 women surveyed by U.N. Women said they now left their homes only once or twice a month. In a sign of their deepening isolation, seven in 10 women described their mental health as bad or very bad, she said.
"I urge all governments and other international donors to continue investing in Afghan women and girls, to increase, not cut, their foreign aid," said Ferguson, stressing that Afghanistan was facing the world's most severe women's rights crisis.
She said the U.N.'s $1.7 billion humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan was only 25% funded and nearly three-quarters of the women's organizations had experienced funding cuts in 2025, while about two-thirds reported that they had six months or less of operational funding remaining.
"Five years into this crisis, this is the moment to deepen our commitment to Afghan women, not to retreat from it."
The Taliban argue they respect women's rights in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture.
Ferguson spoke after a group of 56 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Arab Emirates, issued a joint statement at the U.N. renewing calls on the Taliban to reverse restrictions on women and girls, saying its "systematic repression of women and girls has become a defining feature of the current system."
The countries said Afghanistan remained the only country in the world where girls were banned from secondary and higher education and accused the Taliban of continuing to strip women and girls of their "rights, dignity and agency" through an "ever-expanding web of discriminatory decrees."
Absent from the list announced by Denmark, which coordinated the statement, were Russia and China, as well as Afghanistan's neighbors Pakistan and Iran, the five Central Asian states and India.
Turkey and most other Middle Eastern countries, apart from Lebanon, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, also did not sign, underscoring divisions within the 193-member United Nations over how to engage with the Taliban.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
