The image of Afghan judge Raihana Attaee, standing before several high-ranking dignitaries at the Government House in Auckland, is symbolic of all that Afghanistan has lost in the year since it fell to the Islamist group.

In recent years the troubled nation had made progress towards greater gender equality, women were more visible in the public space and education was increasingly accessible. But since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 women's rights have been stripped right back, says Attaee.

"Women are not allowed to go to work, if a woman wants to travel they have to have a man with them, there is no free media, no freedom of speech," Attaee says.

This open criticism of the Taliban is impossible in today's Afghanistan but was rife at the event welcoming Attaee and her fellow Afghan refugees to New Zealand.

"Anyone who wants to criticise the Taliban, they will arrest and torture them," she says.

"From the day the Taliban took over, it was dark days for Afghanistan."

As the only female judge at the Primary Court of Elimination of Violence Against Women in Nangarhar Attaae has convicted terrorists, rapists and murderers. But when the Taliban seized power, they gave those she'd imprisoned freedom to seek revenge.

She was one of the hundreds of judges that New Zealand's own supreme court judge Susan Glazebrook has helped bring to safety. The President of the International Association of Women Judges helped organise visas, charter flights out of Afghanistan, and onward flights to their new home countries.

READ MORE

• Afghan visa seekers still without answers six months on from court win
• Taliban orders women to cover faces in public, threatens punishment for closest male relative
• $6 million more given for Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis
• Afghanistan girls in tears over chaotic Taliban schools U-turn

"These were people that we knew, people that were our friends, they were in danger...we could not just stand by and leave these women to their faith," she says.

So far they've managed to get more than 200 out, though 80 remain.

"We made a promise, we made a promise in August that we would not leave anyone behind, and we mean to keep that promise."

But she says that it is becoming increasingly tough.

To date, the New Zealand Government has granted 200 visas to human rights defenders - four of them female Afghan judges. These are on top of more than 1000 that have been helped to resettle here since the Taliban took power.

And while Afghan advocates have repeatedly called for more pathways to be opened for those in imminent danger, it appears there is little room for more. The Associate Immigration Minister Phil Twyford told 1News his office is unlikely to consider future applications.

"We've helped about 1700 Afghans come here. It's been a massive operation, and we are now really focusing on helping them settle, get housing and education and work."

The event he'd organised at Government House was designed to do just that, by linking those in attendance to high-ranking members of the human rights community in New Zealand.

Afghans in attendance expressed their gratitude, even as they continued to plead for help for those family and friends left living in a country at war.

Youth activist Lahorjan Lkanwal says it was hard to leave so many behind knowing their lives were in danger.

"It's not only a physical war but a mental war, a culture war and an economic war that is going toward destruction."