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ICC chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women ICC chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women
(about 3 hours later)
Application says there are reasonable grounds to believe crimes against humanity being committed against women and girls in Afghanistan Reasonable grounds to believe crimes against humanity are being committed against women and girls in Afghanistan, application says
The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor said on Thursday he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity. The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader and Afghanistan’s chief justice on the grounds that their persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity.
Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds”. It marks the first time the prosecutor has built a case around systemic crimes against women and girls, legal experts say. It is also a rare moment of vindication for Afghan activists, who over the last three years have often felt abandoned by the international community even as Taliban oppression deepened.
Khan said that Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban”. Shukria Barakzai, activist and former member of the Afghan parliament, said in a statement: “This historic announcement is a powerful message that impunity for flagrant violations of women’s rights is not to be tolerated in Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world. We are deeply grateful to all our Afghan sisters who have worked relentlessly toward this moment.”
He added: “Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable.” Karim Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor, said in a statement that the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, are “criminally responsible” for ongoing persecution of girls, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and their allies.
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. “Our commitment to pursue accountability for gender-based crimes, including gender persecution, remains an absolute priority,” he said. The team will file warrants for other senior Taliban officials soon, he added.
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. Since sweeping back to power in 2021, the Taliban have issued more than 80 decrees that violate women’s basic rights. Women are barred from most work, secondary education and public spaces, and their daily life is restricted in various ways.
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. Recently the group banned windows in rooms frequently used by women, to ensure they could not be seen by men not related to them. New buildings should be constructed without windows in these rooms and existing windows should be covered up, the order stipulated.
“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. Activists are campaigning for the crime of gender apartheid to be recognised under international law, to reflect the scale of Taliban restrictions.
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.” Akila Radhakrishnan, strategic legal adviser on gender justice for the Atlantic Council, said that although the ICC had sought to prosecute gender crimes before, this is the first time they had been the main focus in a case.
After sweeping back to power in August 2021, the Taliban authorities pledged a softer rule than their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. But they quickly imposed restrictions on women and girls that the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”. She said: “It is a landmark, because this is the first time a case has been built around crimes of gender persecution. Usually gender crimes are ancillary, an add-on to a case driven by other [crimes].
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 request for an arrest warrant … demonstrates the systematic way in which these violations have been working in tandem to oppress girls and women under the Taliban’s gender apartheid.”
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. There may not be any immediate consequences. Neither man is likely to travel anywhere they could face arrest – Akhundzada rarely even leaves his base in Kandahar – and the group has only responded with defiance to other international pressure over their treatment of women.
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. Nevertheless, Radhakrishnan said, even without any expectation of a day in court, the warrant sent an important message.
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. She said: “It helps to stigmatise what is happening in Afghanistan. We can now say that people engaging with the Taliban are on notice that what their officials are doing is criminal. There are warrant requests out for the most serious crimes that exist.”
The few remaining female 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. Afghan women who have endured violence and exile for demanding basic rights said the case marked a critical vindication of their struggle.
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. Zahra Haqparast was jailed by the Taliban in 2022 for protesting against restrictions on women’s lives, and now lives in exile. She said: “This is the best news I’ve heard since the Taliban came to power.
The Taliban authorities have consistently dismissed international criticism of their policies, saying all citizens’ rights are provided for under Islamic law. “I was cooking lunch when I heard the news, and I was so happy that I ran to check immediately if it was true. By the time I got back, an hour had passed, and my food was burnt.”
Despite initial outrage at Taliban restrictions when the group seized power in 2021, Afghan women say an international community that once claimed to be fighting in their name has not done enough to fight back.
Heather Barr, deputy women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch, said: “They have felt ignored by the world while the Taliban has systematically stripped their rights away day after day. This step by the ICC is a good start. Afghan women and girls are owed full justice for the Taliban’s crimes and an end, now, to Taliban abuses.”
Afghan activists also called on the court to seek justice for other crimes by several perpetrators over more than four decades of war in Afghanistan.
“It is historic but it is insufficient,” said Shaharzad Akbar, executive director of Rawadari, an Afghan human rights organisation. “It leaves out many victims of war crimes and other perpetuators.”