Strengthening accountability for women and girls in Afghanistan

Accountability in action
Written By GTS

Woman in Herat. Photo credit: Sayed Habib Bedil

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, the De Facto Authorities (DFA) have issued a series of decrees that have systematically eroded women’s rights, freedoms, and access to essential services. These include bans on women working for NGOs (December 2022) and UN agencies (April 2023), alongside ongoing prohibitions on secondary and higher education. In 2024, further restrictions were introduced, limiting women’s access to medical training and tightening rules on seclusion and freedom of movement. Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan was critically underfunded in 2024, with less than half of the required amount secured, and by early 2025, donors announced major funding cuts for the year ahead.

Against this backdrop, engaging both women and men facing humanitarian crisis is essential to ensuring that the humanitarian response reflects their distinct needs and priorities. To strengthen accountability to women and girls, Ground Truth Solutions, in collaboration with Salma Consulting and with support from UN Women and the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group, has conducted four rounds of data collection since 2022, gathering insights from women and men across Afghanistan about their humanitarian experiences and needs.

Ground Truth Solutions and Salma consulting have been tracking the views of women and men on humanitarian aid and how it is provided through quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews since 2022. The research targets the general population, as the vast majority of the population in Afghanistan is in need of humanitarian assistance. By asking communities in Afghanistan for their views on gender norms, humanitarian assistance, protection concerns, and disaster preparedness and working together with aid providers, donors, and policy makers to act on what we hear, we can advance three key objectives: 

  • To track perceptions of gender, cultural norms, and humanitarian assistance over time in the humanitarian response; 

  • Build a stronger evidence base on the needs and priorities of people across Afghanistan to inform the humanitarian response; 

  • Understand how to best respond to specific priorities, capacities, and needs of women and girls, supporting practical recommendations for the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) working group members and the humanitarian response more broadly 

In addition to these overarching objectives outlined above, we have broadened the scope of the research to include a focus on environmental hazards and protection, based  on consultations with key actors and a lack of reliable data from communities on these topics.

We started the exercise with informal consultations with gender specialists, working groups and in-country humanitarian actors. In these conversations we discussed information needs, how people understand what gender-responsive humanitarian programming is, and if they had examples of best practice. We used these insights to inform our survey design and qualitative methodology. Working closely with UN Women and the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) working group members, we take a mixed-methods approach with the aim of co-producing actionable recommendations with  humanitarian actors. 

For the first round of data collection, we implemented surveys and focus group discussions with women and men living in Afghanistan in November and December 2022. In these conversations, we aimed to get a broad understanding of perceptions on aid, gender-sensitive humanitarian programming, and about gender norms more generally. 

Our second round of quantitative and qualitative data collection was completed in February and March 2023, after the nationwide ban on women non-governmental organisation (NGO) workers. The findings provided timely insight into the perceptions of women accessing aid without the availability of women aid workers. 

In September 2023, we wrapped up our third round of data collection activities. In this round we explored community-based solutions with women’s groups, discussed notions of nepotism and bribery with community leaders, and asked women how assistance could be adapted to better suit their needs and priorities.  

The latest round of qualitative and quantitative data collection took place between August 2024 and February 2025. This round focused on the impacts of disasters, including floods, droughts, and earthquakes, on women, as well as broader protection concerns. The findings are examined in the context of rising gender inequalities and the limited capacity of humanitarian actors to address women’s needs due to De Facto Authority (DFA) restrictions and declining funding.

GTS
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