The International Ccriminal Ccourt (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for two senior Taliban leaders, accusing them of crimes against humanity for the persecution of women and girls.
In a statement, the ICC said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and Afghanistan’s chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, had ordered policies that deprived women and girls of “education, privacy, and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience, and religion." Since returning to power, the militant Islamists have banned women from paid work and girls from secondary education, as well as issuing a series of edicts that ban women from many areas of public life, including walking in parks and even speaking in public.
The court said the alleged crimes had taken place since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021 until January 2025, when the ICC’s chief prosecutor first sought the warrant. Afghan human rights activists have called for the Taliban’s system of depriving women and girls of rights and freedoms and enforcing segregation to be recognized as gender apartheid.
Tahera Nasiri, an Afghan women’s rights activist now living in Canada, said the arrest warrant was an acknowledgment of the abuses Afghan women faced. “For four years, the Taliban have told us to stay silent, stay at home, cover our faces, give up our education, our voices, and our dreams. Now, an international court is saying: “Enough. This is a crime.”
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