The International Criminal Court prosecutor said on Thursday he had applied for arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders in Afghanistan including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of crimes against humanity for widespread discrimination against women and girls.
Khan said that Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban”.
He added: “Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable.”
ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant – a process that could take weeks or even months.
The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its arrest warrants – with mixed results. In theory this means that anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.
Khan said that he would soon be seeking additional applications for other Taliban officials and noted that other crimes against humanity were being committed as well as persecution.
“Perceived resistance or opposition to the Taliban was, and is, brutally repressed through the commission of crimes including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts,” he said.
Human Rights Watch said that the prosecutor’s actions should put the Taliban’s exclusion of women and girls from public life back on the international community agenda. Liz Evenson, the organisation’s international justice director, said: “Three years after the Taliban retook power, their systematic violations of women and girls’ rights … have accelerated with complete impunity.”
After sweeping back to power in August 2021, the Taliban authorities pledged a softer rule than their first stint in power from 1996-2001. But they quickly imposed restrictions on women and girls that the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”.
Edicts in line with their interpretation of Islamic law handed down by Akhundzada, who rules by decree from the movement’s birthplace in southern Kandahar, have squeezed women and girls from public life.
The Taliban government barred girls from secondary school and women from university in the first 18 months after they ousted the US-backed government, making Afghanistan the only country in the world to impose such bans.
The authorities imposed restrictions on women working for non-governmental groups and other employment, with thousands of women losing government jobs – or being paid to stay at home.
Beauty salons have been closed and women blocked from visiting public parks, gyms and baths as well as travelling long distances without a male chaperone. A “vice and virtue” law announced last summer ordered women not to sing or recite poetry in public and for their voices and bodies to be “concealed” outside the home.
The few remaining women TV presenters wear tight headscarves and face masks in line with a 2022 diktat by Akhundzada that women cover up fully in public, including their faces, ideally with a traditional burqa. Most recently, women were suspended from attending health institutes offering courses in midwifery and nursing, where many had flocked after the university ban.
Rights groups and the international community have condemned the restrictions, which remain a key sticking point in the Taliban authorities’ pursuit of official recognition, which it has not received from any state.
The Taliban authorities have consistently dismissed international criticism of their policies, saying all citizens’ rights are provided for under Islamic law.
The Afghanistan probe is one of the longest by ICC prosecutors and has been beset by legal and practical delays. The initial preliminary examination started in 2007 and it was only in 2022 that a full-scale investigation moved forward.
Since Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban returned to power in 2021 it has clamped down on women’s rights, including limits to schooling, work and general independence in daily life.
