The chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ International Criminal Court announced Thursday that he was seeking arrest warrants for the two most senior leaders of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime for crimes against humanity over the group’s treatment of women and girls.
Prosecutor Karim Khan said that after a thorough investigation and review of evidence, his office found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and the group’s Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani bear “criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds,” under the treaty that founded the ICC, known as the Rome Statute.
Khan said his office had concluded that both men are “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women.”
The statement said the alleged crimes were committed between “at least” from the Taliban’s retaking of control over Afghanistan in August 2021 “until the present day,” all across the country.
“This ongoing persecution entails numerous severe deprivations of victims’ fundamental rights, contrary to international law, including the right to physical integrity and autonomy, to free movement and free expression, to education, to private and family life, and to free assembly,” said Khan.
There was no immediate reaction to Khan’s request by Taliban leadership.
Since regaining control of Afghanistan, the Taliban has imposed a long list of harsh laws targeting women and girls. The measures have seen women pushed out of public life and drawn condemnation from much of the international community, including allegations of gender-based apartheid.
Under the pretext of Islamic Sharia law, the measures have deprived girls and women of formal education from the age of 12, the right to visit public parks or travel alone, or even to meet with a doctor unless accompanied by a male chaperone.
Last month, the Taliban imposed a ban on women training to become midwives and nurses — another devastating blow in a country that already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. According to data from the World Bank, 620 women die for every 100,000 live births in Afghanistan due to pregnancy-related complications.
Akhundzada recently ordered that windows in homes overlooking spaces used by women, such as kitchens, courtyards or water wells, be covered.
Elizabeth Evenson, International Justice Program Director at the New York-based
organization Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday that she hoped the request for ICC warrants against the senior Taliban figures would put the group’s “systematic exclusion of women and girls from public life and targeting of LGBT people back on the international community’s radar.”
Evenson said the Taliban’s gender-based repression had “accelerated with complete impunity” since the summer of 2021, and that “with no justice in sight in Afghanistan, the warrant requests offer an essential pathway to a measure of accountability.”
She also called on the ICC prosecutor to revisit his decision “to deprioritize investigation of abuses by the forces of the former Afghan government and U.S. personnel” who were based in the country for two decades. The probe into the actions of U.S. troops was launched by Khan’s predecessor.
Khan said the request for international arrest warrants highlights the ICC’s commitment to holding those responsible for gender-based crimes accountable, with more arrests and warrant fillings for other senior Taliban members expected to follow as the court’s investigation into the situation in Afghanistan continues.
“The judges of the International Criminal Court will now determine whether these applications for arrest warrants establish reasonable grounds to believe that the named individuals committed the alleged crimes. If the judges issue the warrants, my Office will work closely with the Registrar in all efforts to arrest the individuals,” Khan said, adding that, “as in all situations, I request States Parties to fully cooperate with the Court and help it in enforcing any judicial order.”
While the ICC has the power to issue arrest warrants — and has done so recently for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s former defense chief and a senior Hamas leader — it does not have any means of independently enforcing such warrants.
It is down to individual countries that are signatories to the court’s founding treaty to decide whether to take wanted individuals into custody on ICC warrants, as and when they enter those country’s territories.
The United States is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, and is thus not obligated to detain anyone on an ICC warrant.
Even if the ICC does issue warrants for Akhundzada or other Taliban leaders, it is highly unlikely that they would try to visit any country where they could risk arrest. Virtually the entire world has declined to acknowledge the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government in the wake of their reassertion of control over the country.
Khan himself has faced accusations that he tried for more than a year to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship and groped her against her will. He has categorically denied the allegations, saying there was “no truth to suggestions of misconduct.” ICC officials have said the claims may have been made as part of an Israeli intelligence smear campaign.
