(The Hague) – The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s applications for arrest warrants against two senior Taliban leaders is a milestone in seeking justice for serious abuses against women and girls in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said today. The prosecutor’s January 23, 2025 requests seek a charge of the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds against the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and its chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani.
The ICC prosecutor announced that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Haqqani persecuted Afghan women and girls, and their allies, as well as people whom the “Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression,” including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. The prosecutor referred to the Taliban’s systematic violations of these people’s rights, including to physical integrity and autonomy, to free movement and free expression, to education, to private and family life, and to free assembly.
“The ICC prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against two senior Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of gender persecution should put the Taliban’s oppression of women, girls, and gender nonconforming people back on the international community’s radar,” said Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “With no justice in sight in Afghanistan, the ICC warrant requests offer an essential pathway for a measure of accountability.”
The prosecutor also said that his office found that the Taliban had committed this persecution in connection with other crimes under the ICC’s Rome Statute, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts.
The Taliban have carried out measures such as education bans that restrict schooling for girls beyond grade six, constraining their opportunities for future employment. The Taliban have also systematically limited women’s opportunities to work even in the fields of health and education. Taliban members have beaten, detained, and tortured women who took part in protests seeking their rights. Taliban members have also attacked LGBT people, or threatened them with violence.
The prosecutor’s requests were submitted to a pretrial chamber of three ICC judges, who will determine whether to issue the warrants. ICC judges first authorized the investigation in Afghanistan, an ICC member country, in March 2020 following a preliminary examination that began in 2007. But it was paused for several years, while the prosecutor and then the court’s judges, considered a request by the former Afghanistan government to defer ICC proceedings in favor of prosecutions the then-government asserted it was pursuing.
The court’s judges concluded that any cases pursued by the former government were at best a “very limited fraction” of those that would be covered by an ICC investigation, and that the current government showed no interest in maintaining the deferral request. The judges authorized the resumption of the investigation in October 2022.
On November 28, 2024, six ICC member countries referred the situation of Afghanistan to the ICC prosecutor for investigation, expressing their concern about the severe deterioration of the human rights situation in the country, in particular for women and girls.
Human Rights Watch in September 2023 concluded that the Taliban authorities were committing the crime against humanity of gender persecution against Afghan women and girls.
The Taliban have imposed over 100 written or announced decrees severely restricting the rights of women and girls, including on freedom of movement, expression, and association; prohibitions on many forms of employment; bans on secondary and higher education; and arbitrary arrests and violations of the right to liberty.
The prosecutor’s announcement indicated that his office intends to seek additional warrants against other senior Taliban members. Human Rights Watch has documented a number of other grave crimes by the Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an ISIS-affiliated group, that the ICC prosecutor should also investigate. These include unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, and other serious abuses that target former government security force members, activists, and journalists. Taliban security forces have also arbitrarily detained, tortured, and imposed collective punishment on communities they have accused of association with opposition groups. ISKP forces have claimed responsibility for scores of unlawful attacks on Hazara-Shia communities and religious minorities, killing and injuring thousands. These patterns of attacks have been devastating for the Hazara and Shia communities, including due to the longstanding impunity for these abuses under the previous Afghan and Taliban governments.
The ICC is facing significant pressure following the November 2024 issuance of arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. US lawmakers have renewed their threats to impose sanctions on ICC officials and those cooperating with the court, which could impact the court’s numerous investigations, including on Afghanistan. Governments should welcome the ICC’s critical work with support for the exercise of its independent mandate across all situations on its docket, Human Rights Watch said.
In September, a group of cross-regional countries announced a dispute with Afghanistan under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which could lead to future proceedings against the Taliban before the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ top court charged with hearing cases brought between states.
The ICC’s investigation is authorized to include all alleged crimes falling within the court’s jurisdiction in Afghanistan since May 1, 2003, as well as other crimes committed outside of its territory, if sufficiently linked to the situation, the armed conflict, and committed in the territory of another ICC member country since July 1, 2002. Representations were submitted on behalf of 11,150 individual victims and 130 families during the proceedings to authorize resumption of the investigation before the court’s pretrial chamber, all of which called for investigation.
In addition to other cases against Taliban and ISKP members, the ICC prosecutor should move to bring cases for alleged crimes by former Afghan security forces and US personnel, Human Rights Watch said. The ICC prosecutor previously indicated his office’s investigation would focus on alleged crimes by the Taliban and the ISKP, while deprioritizing alleged crimes by Afghan security forces and US personnel. Victims of abuses and Human Rights Watch and other nongovernmental organizations criticized this decision for creating a double standard.
Human Rights Watch research over many years found numerous violations of international humanitarian law by Afghan government forces. Since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Human Rights Watch documented torture and other ill-treatment sometimes leading to deaths in custody, and cases of summary executions of detainees by the US military and Central Intelligence Agency.
“The international crimes committed in Afghanistan are vast, but a broad approach to accountability is needed to break cycles of impunity that have led to more abuses,” Evenson said. “ICC member countries should ensure the court has the backing and practical assistance it needs to expand its Afghanistan investigations.”
