United Nations – The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan have “armed” the legal and judicial system to oppress women and girls in what is equivalent to “crimes against humanity,” said the independent investigator of human rights in the country.
Richard Bennett said in a report to the UN General Assembly, he circulated on Wednesday that after taking advantage of power in 2021, the Taliban suspended the Constitution and the laws of 2004 that protect the rights of women and girls. These include a historical law that criminalized 22 forms of violence against women, including rape and child and forced marriage.
The Taliban dismissed all the judges under the previous government backed by the United States, including approximately 270 women, replacing them with men who share their extreme Islamic views, lack legal training and stop decisions based on edicts issued by the Talibans, he said.
In addition, he pointed out that the Taliban have assumed total control over the application of the law and research agencies, systematically purging the Afghans who worked for the previous government.
Bennett, who was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council based in Geneva, focused on access to justice and protection for women and girls in his report. He said he celebrated meetings, discussions of focal groups and individual interviews with more than 110 Afghans inside and outside the country. He did it remotely because the Taliban have refused to give him a visa to travel to Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, their repression against women and girls has been widely reported and denounced globally.
Taliban leaders have banned education for women and girls beyond sixth grade, prohibited most of the employment and prohibited women from many public spaces, including parks, gyms and hairdressers. The new laws prohibit the voices of women and bare faces outside the home.
The Taliban remain isolated from the West due to their restrictions to women and girls and have only been recognized by Russia.
Bennett said the Taliban did not respond to an early copy of the report and a request for information about their efforts to guarantee access to justice and protection for women and girls.
Taliban defend their approach to justice by stating that they are implementing the Islamic Sharia law, but Islamic academics and others have said that their interpretation has no parallel in other Muslim majority countries and does not adhere to Islamic teachings. They say that protecting women’s legal rights is a priority.
Bennett said, however, that women do not have rights.
“Today, there are no women’s or fiscal or female women officially registered, leaving women and girls with fewer safe channels to inform abuses or seeking repair,” he wrote. “Together with the lack of female officials in the police and other institutions, the result is a generalized skill of violence and discrimination against women and girls.”
Bennett said that access to justice for girls “is undermined by the dismantling of safeguards and key legal institutions that protect the rights of children”, including youth courts and youth rehabilitation centers.
The taliban requirement that a woman must be accompanied by a male relative also creates barriers to present complaints and attend judicial procedures, he said, and disproportionately widows, women who are heads of their homes, displaced and disabled.
“Women who get involved with the Taliban judicial system, either as victims who seek repair, to solve family problems, to obtain official documents or as alleged criminals, face a hostile environment,” said Bennett. “The courts often reject complaints made by women and are especially reluctant to accept cases related to divorce, custody of children and gender violence.”
Facing these obstacles, said Bennett, women resort more and more to traditional and informal justice mechanisms, including Jirgas and formal shuras, community councils of the elderly, and informal mediation by religious leaders, community or family elders. But all these are dominated by men and raise “serious concerns about the rights of women and girls,” he said.
He said that international forums offer the best hope of justice. He pointed out the application of the International Criminal Court on January 23 for the arrest orders for two high Taliban leaders accused of crimes against humanity for persecution “for gender reasons.” And he urged all countries to support efforts to bring Afghanistan before the International Court of Justice, the highest Court of the UN, for violating the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
