Keeping the File Open: Afghan Women Lawyers and a Profession in Exile
By Mia Risser, Summer Intern
Pictured: Archival case files. LWOB has collected and preserved Afghan 2,500 laws and regulations predating the Taliban takeover.
When a government collapses and a new regime takes over a country, legal professionals are among the first to face persecution. New regime leaders often overhaul the legal system, replacing existing law with their own, sometimes grounded heavily in religious doctrine. In many cases, judges and lawyers are purged and replaced with individuals aligned with the new regime. Some feel unsafe enough to flee their country altogether, hoping to find somewhere they can practice their profession again.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 shows how quickly this can happen. After taking power, the Taliban dramatically altered the Afghan legal system. Many previous legal procedures were completely suspended, and the new judicial standards that replaced them set no clear statutes. As a result, criminal and civil decisions can be made on an ad hoc basis without consistency or regard for judicial process. The Taliban also brought the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association under their Ministry of Justice, seizing the bar’s office and assets and ending its independence. The Taliban then revoked thousands of law licenses; re-licensing was opened to anyone, and prospective attorneys were examined by the Taliban itself, not trained legal professionals. While some male lawyers were able to re-license, they still faced heavy restrictions within the legal system. Women, on the other hand, have been barred from re-applying for their licenses, effectively barring them from the Taliban judicial system.
Besides being pushed out of their professions, women in Afghanistan have been subject to a series of decrees restricting their participation in civic life. Women in Afghanistan are now banned from attending school beyond sixth grade, face employment restrictions, are required to have a man escort them whenever they leave the house, must adhere to a strict dress code that covers their faces and hair, and are forbidden from speaking in public. Taken together, the decrees pushed women out of the legal profession entirely, and gave many reason to leave the country. Afghan legal professionals face severe legal and security restrictions; for women, these restrictions amount to exclusion from the profession itself. Both call for targeted, delicate, rule-of-law support. Where legal institutions come under strain, Lawyers Without Borders (LWOB) works with the people affected, connecting global legal expertise with local needs.
I had been following the news and recent developments from Afghanistan for a couple of years, wondering what could be done about it. When I joined Lawyers Without Borders as a summer intern, I learned that LWOB had already been working to preserve the rule of law on two fronts at once: inside Afghanistan, helping legal professionals hold onto the legal system they had built; and outside it, helping those who had left find a way back into their profession. Eager to learn more, I sat down with Madina Qasimi, Special Advisor in the Executive Office at LWOB. Madina, a former Afghan diplomat, shared her personal experience and further insights into LWOB’s work to support the Afghan legal profession and preserve the rule of law in Afghanistan.
Inside Afghanistan, LWOB combined legal research, law preservation, and sustained contact with the legal professionals still in the country. LWOB connected legal professionals inside Afghanistan with Afghan human rights activists abroad, many of whom were women. Because women had been shut out of practice, the project also trained women legal professionals to use social media safely to raise their voices and participate in civic life. Preserving Afghan legal knowledge was another immediate need: LWOB gathered the laws and regulations passed during the U.S. presence in Afghanistan so they would survive Taliban control. This work no longer receives direct funding, but those involved keep the connections warm and continue collecting laws as they can. Those relationships — between lawyers inside the country and Afghans abroad — are what make the preservation work possible at all.
Outside Afghanistan, the problem was different: the profession had scattered around the world, and legal qualifications earned in Afghanistan counted for little. In 2022, LWOB received funding for a three-year project from the Department of Health and Human Services to support Afghan lawyers and judges who came to the U.S. following the Taliban takeover. LWOB provided legal mentorship and career counseling, helping these professionals rebuild their careers in an unfamiliar legal system. Another program was started in 2024 in partnership with the United States Institute of Peace that paired Afghan women studying law and sharia with Afghan legal professionals abroad, so they could continue their education and work. LWOB provided technical training and guidance, helping to mentor these women as they navigated the shocks of a new culture.
Beyond the activities themselves, LWOB’s work has lasting impacts on both the individuals and communities involved. Working together with Afghan legal professionals, LWOB has collected and preserved 2,500 laws. The collection promotes transparency, preserves legal history, and keeps the pre-2021 framework available to the Afghan legal professionals who need it. The mentorship programs supported 130 women legal professionals through training and guidance. These former judges and lawyers were able to regain their footing within an unfamiliar legal system and begin working in areas like legal aid and academia, enriching both their professional experiences and the American legal landscape.
Listening to Madina discuss LWOB’s work in Afghanistan, I was struck by how much LWOB invests in relationships with legal professionals in the places it works. The program for Afghan women in the U.S., for example, worked in part because Madina ran it herself. Having grown up in Afghanistan and coming to the U.S. as an adult gave her a firsthand understanding of what participants were facing. This type of care and understanding extends to all LWOB programs. Almost all of LWOB’s staff come from, have lived in, or currently live in the countries where they work, grounding each project in local context from the start.
Through its global connections with the legal pro bono community, LWOB brings a depth of experience to address locally identified needs, working alongside regional partners to create context-specific solutions. Through this process, local lawyers, judges, and government officials participate on projects alongside attorneys and legal experts from around the world. These Afghanistan projects demonstrate LWOB’s position clearly: reaching people inside the country who cannot be publicly named, while helping their colleagues rebuild careers abroad.
Afghanistan is a hard case by any measure, but LWOB’s mandate of neutrality affords it a unique position from which to act. The Afghan legal profession was dismantled through licensing bodies and registries rather than by decree, and the people most affected were scattered across countries where their qualifications meant little. Women were effectively barred from the profession entirely. Work in those conditions requires being able to reach people who cannot be publicly identified, and to keep operating where the politics are unresolved. The mandate of neutrality enables LWOB to work in ways that political posture would likely forbid.
Afghan women lawyers are one of many groups whose access to the law is contested. What the last several years demonstrate is a way of working that holds in circumstances where a heavier footprint would fail: get close to the people affected, stay usable to them, and remain in the room long enough to matter. Justice for everyone, especially women, depends on organizations that can still operate when the situation is at its most delicate.
Mia Risser is a rising senior at Indiana University studying Law and Public Policy. Through her summer internship at Lawyers Without Borders, she gained valuable experience working with international law in the context of human rights and hopes to continue building this knowledge in law school and her career.