The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced Thursday that he had requested arrest warrants for the supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban government and the country’s chief judge for their “unprecedented” persecution of women and Afghan girls.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, said in a statement that the leader of the Taliban, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the head of the Supreme Court of Afghanistan, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, had committed a crime against humanity: “Persecution on the gender terrain.”
“Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQI+ community, face unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban,” the statement said.
Since US troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban regained power, fundamentalist leaders have issued codes of vice and virtue that have entirely provoked women from public life and many private activities .
The edicts, presented as Muslim religious rules, excluded women from jobs and almost all public areas. In 2023, the Taliban closed all beauty salons – one of the few public places left in the country where women could gather outside the home. Afghanistan also banned girls from high school and women from university education – the only country to do so.
A United Nations rapporteur described the extreme regime as “gender apartheid.”
Many women have fled the country and others are looking for ways to escape their confined lifestyle.
The prosecutor’s decision is the first legal filing by the court, which is based in The Hague, to include the plight of LGBTQI+ groups in a discrimination complaint. But this is not the first international legal attempt to pressure the Taliban to loosen its grip on the lives of Afghan women.
Last year, Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands took the Taliban to the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest court, and denounced them for “brutal and systematic” violations. » of the United Nations Convention, ratified by Afghanistan, which prohibits all forms of discrimination against women.
Other countries have since joined the case, which is making its way through the global court and is expected to lead to public hearings and, perhaps, court orders.
Although the Taliban has ignored international pressure to change its extremist treatment of women, activists hope the group would make concessions as the country’s leaders seek to normalize diplomatic relations or secure international aid. They say the international court’s cases are important in keeping the plight of Afghan women on the agenda.
“Afghan women and girls finally have a chance to achieve justice for the cruelty they have endured since the Taliban takeover,” said Bininifer Nowrojee, president of the Open Society Foundations, an independent group working for justice, democratic governance and human rights. “Without the ICC and other international courts, Afghan women and girls would have nowhere else to hold the Taliban accountable.”
Mr Khan’s request for warrants is part of his wider investigation into alleged Taliban crimes. In his brief, the prosecutor said his office would seek additional warrants for other senior Taliban officials for broad attacks against the Afghan civilian population.
A three-judge panel issues ICC arrest warrants, a process that can take months. Lawyers familiar with the court said those warrants could emerge more quickly because edicts discriminating against Afghan women in violation of international law have been openly issued by Taliban leaders.
The Taliban leader has not been known to leave the country, so if the warrants are issued, it is likely they can be executed.
Mr. Khan said in his statement that opposition to the Taliban is “brutally repressed” through “crimes, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts.” He compared the oppression and violence to the Taliban’s previous crimes when they were previously in power.
Ultraconservative activists rose to prominence in the aftermath of the withdrawal of invading Soviet troops, capturing the capital, Kabul, in 1996. An alliance of international forces led by the United States invades. The bombing campaign led to the retreat of the Taliban.
ICC investigations into crimes committed in Afghanistan began in 2007 and have long been on the back burner. They have included accusations of misconduct by U.S. troops, including extrajudicial killings and torture.
But Mr Khan surprised many when, shortly after taking office in 2021, he announced he would “deactivate” the investigation into US personnel. He said his decision was based on his need to use limited resources efficiently. Which essentially sidelined the American component of the investigation.
