AFGHAN women fleeing one of the world’s most extreme systems of gender persecution are being denied safety in Britain, Amnesty International warned today.

Asylum policies framed as restoring “control” are designed to deter people from seeking protection, shutting out women escaping Taliban repression, Amnesty and the Gender Action for Peace and Security network said.

Recognition rates for Afghan asylum claims have fallen from 96 per cent to 34 per cent since the current government took office, with at least 370 Afghan women and girls refused asylum in 2025 alone.

In Afghanistan, women and girls have been erased from public life, barred from education, excluded from work, stripped of autonomy, and silenced by sweeping restrictions on their movement and expression.

Many are effectively confined to their homes under threat of punishment.

Yet under current British asylum policies, many are being denied protection.

Amnesty UK head of government affairs Karla McLaren said: “The fact that Afghan women are being denied refuge here, despite clear evidence of the brutality they face under the Taliban, shows the extent of the moral and practical collapse in the UK’s asylum decision-making.

“Denying protection to women who so clearly should be recognised as refugees, preventing them from rebuilding their lives with dignity, and deliberately subjecting them to years of uncertainty is not strength, but cruelty.

“Ministers cannot claim international leadership on women’s rights while turning away women fleeing persecution.”

Ms McLaren said that Britain’s treatment of Afghan women seeking protection “is a total betrayal of the principles it claims to stand for.”

The government was approached for comment.