Zahra Kazemi, President of the Women’s Wing of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, delivered a powerful and emotional speech at the 2025 Global Democracy Conference (GDC) in Switzerland, drawing international attention to the deepening humanitarian crisis under Taliban rule.
Calling the condition of Afghan women “inhumane,” Kazemi urged the global community to take immediate action. “They haven’t just shut schools,” she said, “they’ve made it hard for women to even breathe. Every day, we watch a generation’s dreams die.”
Kazemi, who has twice been forced into exile herself, shared a harrowing account of life under the Taliban, accusing the regime of carrying out a systematic erasure of women from public and private life. “This is a silent genocide,” she warned. “They want to erase women not just from society, but from the very history of Afghanistan.”
Highlighting the risks of unmonitored foreign assistance, Kazemi cautioned that international aid, if given without checks, only strengthens the Taliban’s regime. “Every dollar given without oversight is helping entrench their rule. Aid must not become fuel for terrorism,” she emphasized.
She called on the international community to impose strict sanctions on Taliban-controlled banking channels and to establish robust monitoring mechanisms for humanitarian aid distribution.
In her concluding remarks, Kazemi issued a stark warning: “Your silence today will become our daughters’ scream tomorrow.”
The five-day Global Democracy Conference (GDC) gathered leading voices in human rights, democracy, and gender justice from across the world to address growing threats to civil liberties and democratic governance.
