Afghanistan: ICC Accuses the Taliban of Gender Persecution

Four Arrest Warrants: Charges of Gender Persecution

Translated by Caterina Stella.

On October 5, 2026, the International Criminal Court (ICC), specifically the Pre-Trial Chamber II, decided to unseal four arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders accused of gender persecution – a crime against humanity under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute. Among those named in the warrants are Taliban Supreme Leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and three high-ranking figures across the judicial and education systems: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Afghanistan, Abdul Hakim Haqqani; Education Minister, Habibullah Agha; and Minister of Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem. ICC said that there are reasonable grounds to believe all four suspects are criminally responsible for ordering and soliciting gender persecution against girls, women and people non-conforming with the Taliban’s policy on gender. These crimes are believed to have been committed on the territory of Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 and have continued until at least January 2025.

ICC considered that the four suspects have implemented a governmental policy that resulted in severe violations of fundamental rights of the Afghan civilian population including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance. The Court found that gender persecution encompasses not only direct acts of violence, but also the imposition of discriminatory societal norms. In this regard, two key decrees issued in 2026 have further restricted the rights and equality of women and girls in Afghanistan.

1. Decree No. 12: It formally removes equality between men and women before the law, placing husbands in a position of legal authority over their wives and limiting women’s access to justice; it criminalizes violence withing marriage only if he causes severe and visible physical injuries.
2. Decree No. 18: It makes it significantly more difficult for women to leave a marriage, while preserving men’s unilateral right to divorce. It also implicitly permits child marriage, further undermining the rights of women and girls.

Erased from Public Life: The Ban on Education

When the Taliban regained control of the country following the US withdrawal in August 2021, they barred women from working, restricted their access to most public spaces and prevented girls from continuing their education beyond elementary school. Last year, Akhundzada banned buildings from having windows looking into places where a woman might sit or stand. UNESCO condemns this dire situation in Afghanistan and calls for immediate restoration of women education beyond the primary level. For five years, Afghan women have been excluded from secondary school, university and public life, while their employment opportunities have also been restricted. These policies have reversed two decades of progress, leaving 2.4 million girls out of school. To counter this exclusion, UNESCO has launched alternative education programmes, literacy and psychosocial support programs reaching nearly 70,000 students, 73% of whom are women. Because the de facto authorities prohibit girls from attending formal state schools beyond the primary level, UNESCO bypasses these restrictions by partnering with local communities and trusted international organizations – including the Global Partnership for Education and the European Union – to create “safe spaces” where girls can keep learning outside the education system from which they have been excluded by the authorities.

Restrictions on female education and employment in Afghanistan are creating a profound crisis, preventing the next generation from training to replace current female professionals who retire or leave the country. According to a UNICEF analysis conducted in April 2026, Afghanistan risks losing 20,000 female teachers and 5,400 female healthcare workers by 2030. This would severely limit children’s access to education and maternal-child healthcare. This impact is compounded by social norms that often prevent women from receiving medical care from male healthcare professionals. The exclusion of women also costs the country $84 million annually in lost economic output. Additionally, female representation in public administration already fell from 21% to 17.7% between 2023 and 2025. In this regard, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stated, “Denying Afghan girls access to secondary education robs an entire nation of its potential – locking girls, their families, and their communities into poverty, weakening health outcomes, and silencing the economic engine that an educated generation of women could ignite.”

Therefore, the social restrictions imposed on Afghan women do more than limit individual freedoms: their consequences extend to society as a whole. Over the medium and long term, they risk creating far-reaching social problems that will affect not only women but the entire country. How can the gradual loss of skills be offset? How will Afghanistan address the shortage of thousands of female teachers and healthcare workers? The systematic exclusion of such a large part of the population risks becoming a structural problem for the country in the years ahead.

UN Women’s Response to Fight Invisibility

In August 2026, UN Women - the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women - issued a series of recommendations to the international community in response to the crisis. These include providing flexible, long-term funding to local, women-led organisations, many of which risk shutting down because of a lack of financial support. UN Women has also called for at least 30% of all international aid allocated to Afghanistan to be directed towards programmes that explicitly address women's needs, avoiding gender-neutral projects and any diplomatic or institutional engagement that could, in any way, legitimise the Taliban's discriminatory policies. UN Women wants to support women's economic independence by providing loans and vocational training for local female entrepreneurs and women seeking to establish small businesses. UN Women has also stressed the importance of amplifying Afghan women's voices in diplomatic forums to combat their exclusion from public life.

The alarming figures surrounding the situation of Afghan women should remind us that behind every number there is a name, a face and a story. Afghan women should not be seen merely as passive victims of the Taliban regime because many of them continue to fight every day to make their voices heard, to learn, to work and even to teach in secret. It would be a mistake to assume that they are silently accepting these oppressive policies. Afghan women are not simply enduring them: they continue to resist every day with extraordinary courage.

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