KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – A 25-year-old woman has been fatally stabbed by her husband in Herat province, western Afghanistan, amid a rising number of domestic violence cases across the country.
Local sources reported that the young woman was killed in Obe district on Sunday, January 5. The sources pointed to domestic violence as the motive behind the incident, a troubling trend that has increased since the Taliban’s return to power.
Local Taliban authorities have not yet commented on the incident.
Even before the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan had one of the highest rates of violence against women, with nine out of 10 women experiencing at least one form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime.
In a 2018 report, the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) revealed that of the 237 documented cases of violence against women in the country, 80% were committed by male relatives, with spouses being the primary perpetrators.
The situation has significantly worsened since the Taliban’s return to power, as the regime has systematically excluded women, stripping them of their fundamental rights and freedoms through extreme misogynistic policies.
From January 2022 to June 2024, Afghan Witness, a project of the Center for Information Resilience, documented 700 incidents of violence against 840 women and girls in Afghanistan. These cases included femicide, physical abuse, sexual assault, torture, enforced disappearances, and other forms of violence targeting women and girls.
Additionally, the Taliban has systematically dismantled the legal and institutional frameworks that once protected women, leaving them trapped in a cycle of violence with no access to justice.
