The International Criminal Court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two top Taliban leaders, accusing them of persecuting girls and women in Afghanistan.
The pair are suspected of “ordering, inducing or soliciting” the persecution of girls, women and others who don’t conform with the Taliban’s policy on gender, the ICC said in a statement.
Haibatullah Akhundzada, supreme leader of the Taliban, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, chief justice of the hardline Islamist group, are “criminally responsible” for carrying out persecution on gender-based grounds since “at least” August 15 2021, the ICC’s chief prosecutor said back in January.
The Taliban called the arrest warrants “nonsense,” writing in a statement that it does not recognize the ICC.
Since seizing control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the group has implemented a string of oppressive measures against women and girls, even cracking down on the sound of women’s voices in public.
Girls have been barred from education after sixth grade. Women must veil their bodies and wear a face covering at all times in public, and have also been forbidden to look at men they are not related to.
“While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,” the ICC said on Tuesday.
“Specifically, the Taliban severely deprived, through decrees and edicts, girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion,” it continued.
Other people, including “allies of girls and women” and those with sexualities or gender identities viewed as “inconsistent with the Taliban’s policy on gender,” were also targeted by the Taliban, the ICC said.
The Taliban said in its Tuesday statement that the court demonstrated “enmity and hatred for the pure religion of Islam” by labelling its interpretation of Sharia law a crime against humanity.
The issuing of the arrest warrants came a day after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on the situation in Afghanistan, in which it expressed “serious concern about the grave, worsening, widespread and systematic oppression of all women and girls in Afghanistan,” and called for the Taliban to “swiftly reverse these policies.”
Lisa Davis, the ICC’s Special Adviser on Gender and Other Discriminatory Crimes, said in a post on social media that this is “the first time in history” that an international tribunal has confirmed LGBTQ people to be “victims of crimes against humanity, namely gender persecution.”
Rights groups commended the move. Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard called it “a crucial step to hold accountable all those allegedly responsible for the gender-based deprivation of fundamental rights to education, to free movement and free expression, to private and family life, to free assembly, and to physical integrity and autonomy.”
Liz Evenson, the international justice director of Human Rights Watch, said that the arrest warrants could “provide victims and their families with an essential pathway to justice.”
This story has been updated with developments.
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