Listen to Afghan women—but above all, hear them

 

For the past five years, Afghan women have faced the gradual erasure of their rights, their visibility, and their participation in decision-making spaces. Yet behind the statistics and the restrictions, they continue to act, to fight for their rights, and to sustain their communities. In this fifth year of Taliban rule, the NGO SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL has created « Women in WASH, » an initiative focused on water, hygiene, and sanitation, designed not only to listen to Afghan women but, above all, to recognize their expertise and create the conditions for them to influence the decisions that affect them.

 

Made invisible, but never silent

 

August 15, 2026 marks the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. The numbers describe a brutal reality. Since 2021, Afghanistan has ranked last every year on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Index, which measures women’s inclusion, justice, and security around the world. During this period, more than 100 decrees, directives, and practices have restricted the freedom, work, education, movement, and daily lives of Afghan girls and women. Today, they are largely excluded from the public sector, from employment with international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and from formal decision-making structures. According to UN Women, there is currently no institutional mechanism left that allows Afghan women to take part in decisions affecting their lives and their future. Women are often required to go through a *mahram* — a male relative — to communicate their needs and views.

 

But their daily lives did not stop in 2021. Women continue to carry responsibilities within their households. Some run businesses, lead civil society organizations, or head local initiatives. « Afghan women are not passive, » explains Sameera Noori, director of COAR, a major Afghan NGO. « They organize themselves into formal or informal collectives, negotiate, and find solutions ». And this work pays off: through negotiation, patient explanation, and daily effort, small victories do happen. In one place, authorities eventually agree to allow a training session for women. In another, a mullah agrees to supply his daughter with sanitary pads. These spaces for action are fragile, constrained, and often invisible. Yet they point to a reality frequently lost in the dominant narrative about Afghan women: they remain active agents in their own lives, their families, and their communities, even as their room to act has been sharply narrowed.

 

Male decisions, female needs

 

The issue of access to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) crystallizes these contradictions. In Afghan households, it is women who fetch water, manage household hygiene, care for children and the sick, and handle their own needs, including menstrual health. In some rural settings, they also continue to work the fields and tend livestock. They hold very concrete knowledge of the day-to-day needs and constraints surrounding water. And yet they are frequently excluded from decision-making — as in traditional irrigation systems run by *mirabs*, groups of men responsible for allocating water among farmers along an irrigation canal, where women’s participation is socially unacceptable[2]. « Water is an essential resource for women in all of their daily activities, » Sameera explains. « Their difficulties in accessing it could be resolved by involving them in the design of humanitarian programs. » Despite this, the WASH sector — public, private, and humanitarian alike — remains overwhelmingly male in its workforce and its decision-making spaces. WASH activities are often designed by men, from a technical perspective that gives little consideration to women’s specific needs, and the consequences are immediate: water points that are too far away, latrines that are poorly lit and unsafe at night, and spaces that offer no privacy and are ill-suited to women’s lives.

Consulting women is now considered standard practice in program design and monitoring. But being consulted doesn’t necessarily mean influencing a decision. Between what a woman says in a community discussion and the service that ultimately gets funded and implemented, many trade-offs take place. Which priorities make it through to decision-makers, and which get lost along the way? These are the questions SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL set out to address through « Women in WASH, » an initiative launched in 2024 in partnership with the French Crisis and Support Centre (CDCS).

 

 

Women in WASH: putting women back at the center of expertise

 

Designed to strengthen the practices and technical capacities of WASH sector actors, Women in WASH aims to improve the quality, safety, dignity, and contextual adaptation of basic services to women’s needs. The initiative seeks to enrich, through the direct and active contribution of Afghan women, the evidence base on their practices, needs, and priorities. It supports the development of practical tools and guidelines for WASH actors, and strengthens knowledge-sharing, technical exchange, and the standing of women’s expertise within the sector. To do this, three components work together and reinforce one another:

• A technical platform designed to foster learning, sector engagement, and support for women-led initiatives. Currently run by SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL, it is intended to become an independent structure led by Afghan women and organizations. It aims to bring together bodies representing the full range of civil society actors in the WASH field — public, private, or non-governmental — with a central role given to Afghan women and women’s organizations.
• A diagnostic assessment analyzing women’s practices, knowledge, needs, and priorities regarding WASH; how these are gathered, understood, taken into account, and implemented across different interventions, including formal programmatic processes; and existing local initiatives, both formal and informal.
• « The reform », which translates the diagnostic’s findings into concrete tools, measures, and recommended initiatives for actors implementing or supporting WASH services, in order to better integrate women’s and girls’ needs, ideas, and participation into decision-making. These will be discussed, reviewed, adapted, and promoted through the technical platform.

 

So where do things stand?

 

The « Women in WASH » initiative entered its first operational phase in 2025 with the establishment of an initial version of the technical platform. Partnerships have been formed with several women-led Afghan organizations and technical partners:

• Citizens Organization for Advocacy and Resilience (COAR), a national NGO with 36 years of experience, contributes operational expertise on women’s access to WASH services.
  Safe Path Prosperity, a social enterprise manufacturing reusable sanitary pads in Kabul and Kandahar, contributes technical expertise on menstrual health and market access for women’s products.
• The Afghan Midwives Association (AMA), a professional association, contributes expertise in women’s health, hygiene practices, and service interfaces.
• Samuel Hall, a research partner, provides technical and methodological support for evaluation design and analysis. SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL contributes to the coordination and implementation of the initiative.

 

In 2026, the diagnostic assessment — the second component of « Women in WASH » — was launched following the co-development of tools and methodologies with platform stakeholders. The entire process is led by women, from defining the research questions and developing the tools through to data collection, translation, and analysis. As of August 2026, more than 40 discussions and interviews have been conducted with women and men across six provinces to compare women’s realities in varied geographic, social, and operational contexts: Bamyan, Herat, Kabul, Kandahar, Nangarhar, and Nimroz. The analysis will highlight:

 

Women’s realities: their practices, knowledge, needs, and priorities regarding WASH.
Response and decision-making processes: how women’s priorities are assessed, interpreted, prioritized, and taken into account at the community, organizational, and institutional levels.
Underlying determinants: the family, community, institutional, and contextual factors that shape these dynamics, including social norms, power relations, education, socio-economic conditions, and operational constraints.

A first version of the report presenting the diagnostic’s findings is expected by the end of September, with the final report due by the end of October 2026. It will then inform « the reform », the operational component of « Women in WASH »:

• Translating the findings into practical tools and recommendations to help humanitarian organizations better understand, account for, and respond to women’s priorities.
• Engaging WASH sector actors, donors, and technical partners in structured dialogue on how this data can be better integrated into the design of programs and basic services.
• Testing and refining these approaches before encouraging their wider adoption across the sector.

 

Through this research work and the establishment of the technical platform — both designed, driven, and led by Afghan women and women’s organizations — « Women in WASH » seeks to create a mechanism through which Afghan women’s realities, knowledge, and solutions can shape the decisions that affect their daily lives. Five years after the Taliban’s return to power, the challenge is to keep women’s expertise from disappearing as spaces for influence continue to shrink. For the humanitarian sector, listening is no longer enough.

 

Laure Larroquette and Rayhana Karim.

 

 

[1] Women, Peace and Security Index – Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security

[2] https://www.academia.edu/2997-6006/3/1/10.20935/AcadEnvSci8027

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For more information, or to receive a copy of the Women in WASH report, please contact Rayhana Karim at wash.pm@solidarites-afghanistan.org or Laure Larroquette at llarroquette@solidarites.org

 

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Discover other articles from this edition:

• Links that unite – Alain Boinet
• Before the transition, building resilience – Cyprien Fabre
• Charity Lottery: An Idea That Has Been in the Works for Twenty Years—It’s Time to Finally Adopt It – Antoine Vaccaro