On June 16, 2025, Richard Bennett, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, presented a report to the 59th session of the Human Rights Council examining access to justice and protection for women and girls under Taliban rule. The report concludes that the Taliban’s transformation of Afghanistan’s legal and justice sectors “actively weaponizes the legal, judicial, and social order to oppress women and girls״ and constitutes an “institutionalized system of discrimination, oppression, and domination amounting to crimes against humanity.”

Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban have dismantled the Republic-era legal framework, suspending the 2004 Constitution and replacing key laws with “a patchwork of so-called laws, decrees, and edicts based on their ideology and extreme interpretation of Sharia.” All judges appointed under the previous government have been dismissed, including around 270 women, and replaced with Taliban-affiliated judges who often lack professional legal training. The Attorney General’s Office has been abolished and replaced with the Directorate of Supervision and Prosecution of Decrees and Orders, while women are prohibited from registering as lawyers.

The report emphasizes that Taliban interpretations of Sharia are “neither fundamentally nor practically aligned with Islamic teachings,” with Islamic scholars raising concerns about the group’s “selective, distorted, or decontextualised use of Hanafi sources.” The systematic exclusion of women from the justice sector has created what Bennett characterizes as “gender apartheid,” with women facing hostile court environments, arbitrary detention, and barriers to accessing legal protection. The report documents that teenage girls have been barred from school for 534 days and women from universities for 78 days, making Afghanistan the only country globally where women are denied most formal education.

Bennett called for international accountability measures, noting that on January 23, 2025, the ICC Prosecutor requested arrest warrants for two senior Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds. He urged support for ongoing efforts to bring Afghanistan before the International Court of Justice for violations of CEDAW and emphasized that normalization of the de facto authorities remains premature without measurable human rights improvements.