No Justice for Women in the Taliban’s Afghanistan

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, a team of VICE News journalists stayed behind to document the rapid decline of women’s rights under the new extremist government. The impactful and revealing No Justice for Women in the Taliban’s Afghanistan is the result of their investigation across north and south Afghanistan, where they explored the present-day plight—and troublesome future—of a new generation of girls growing up under Taliban rule. Investigating the lack of education, healthcare, economic opportunity, and justice, reporter Isobel Yeung weaves together a harrowing and affecting picture of oppression in post-war Afghanistan, where the “new” Taliban swear they are different from their 20th Century predecessors.  She takes viewers from a dangerously understaffed maternity ward to a packed all-male madrassa where the head of the school refuses to look at her or address her directly because of her gender. Yeung speaks to scarred survivors in a battered women’s shelter, then to Taliban-appointed judges at the court building, who repeatedly dismiss patterns of violence against wives and daughters. She reports from households gripped by poverty and food insecurity, and grills a top-ranking spokesperson about the country’s hunger problem and the dismal policies around women’s equality. For bearing witness as a humanitarian crisis unfolds, the poignant and powerful No Justice for Women in the Taliban’s Afghanistan receives a Peabody.