Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), in a report titled, “The Taliban’s war on women: The crime against humanity of gender persecution in Afghanistan,” have denounced the severe restrictions imposed on women and girls by the Taliban in Afghanistan as gender-based persecution, which is a crime against humanity.
In the report, the two rights organizations highlighted in the report how the Taliban’s repression of Afghan women’s rights, together with “imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment,” could qualify as gender persecution under the International Criminal Court.
They referred to the ICC statute, which designates discrimination based on gender as a crime against humanity.
In August 2021, as U.S and NATO troops prepared to leave Afghanistan after two decades of conflict, the Taliban took control of the nation.
Despite early assurances of a more moderate government, the Taliban quickly began to impose restrictions on women and girls, excluding them from public places and the majority of employment and forbidding girls’ education past the sixth grade. The actions were reminiscent of the Taliban’s earlier authority over Afghanistan in the late 1990s, when they also imposed their stringent application of Sharia, or Islamic law.
The Taliban, whose government has not been formally recognized by the United Nations or the international world, have already been shunned, and the harsh edicts have sparked a global uproar against them.
Santiago A. Canton, the ICJ Secretary General, noted in the report that the Taliban’s actions are of such “magnitude, gravity and of such a systematic nature,” that they qualify “as a crime against humanity of gender persecution.”
Both organizations urged the International Criminal Court to pursue legal action and include this crime in their ongoing inquiry into what is occurring in Afghanistan. Additionally, they urged nations “to exercise universal jurisdiction” to hold the Taliban accountable in accordance with international law.
According to the report, the Taliban have been holding, forcibly vanishing, and torturing women and girls who have participated in nonviolent demonstrations. The report added that the Taliban also made them sign “agreements” or “confessions” promising not to protest again.
“A War Against Women”
Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General for Amnesty International opined that what is happening in Afghanistan is “a war against women,” which amounts to “international crimes” that are “organized, widespread, systematic.”
Without giving further details, Callamard called for the international community to dismantle “this system of gender oppression and persecution.”
Attempts to compel women and girls into such marriages as well as instances of them occurring were documented by Amnesty International. In the report, it was said that those who rejected such unions were “subjected to abduction, intimidation, threats, and torture.”
The case of a 15-year-old girl who was compelled to marry a Taliban leader over her family’s objections in the northeastern province of Takhar in August 2021 and the case of a 33-year-old female journalist and social activist who was compelled to marry a Taliban commander the following month were both mentioned in the report.
“We simply cannot afford to fail the women and girls of Afghanistan,” said Canton, the ICJ Secretary General.
The report also revealed that Afghan men have also been the victims of human rights crimes committed by the Taliban.
Reports of “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, and torture” of people connected to the former, Western-backed Afghan administration that disintegrated in the face of the Taliban control of the nation have been documented by a number of monitoring organizations.
