RASC News Agency: Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has undergone one of the most aggressive campaigns of gender erasure in modern history camouflaged in the language of law and cloaked in the rhetoric of morality. Through the issuance of over 80 decrees, the Taliban have systematically stripped Afghanistani women of virtually every fundamental right: access to education, employment, healthcare, recreation, public life, and even the most basic freedom of movement. These decrees are not incidental policies. They represent a calculated blueprint to eliminate women from the fabric of Afghanistani society. Under the pretense of establishing an Islamic legal framework, the Taliban have replaced legitimate institutions with a medieval theocracy designed not to govern equitably, but to subjugate and control. In doing so, they have manufactured a legal regime in which women are not recognized as autonomous human beings, but rather as legal dependents stripped of agency, dignity, and voice.
The Taliban’s first step toward building this authoritarian legal order was to dismantle the independent judicial system established over the past two decades. They abolished the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, disbanded formal courts, and expelled all female judges, lawyers, and prosecutors. In their place, they installed untrained male clerics Taliban loyalists with no judicial credentials to preside over legal matters based on their own interpretations of Sharia. In this new Taliban court system, women have no standing. They are denied the right to file complaints, testify freely, or access legal representation. The very notion of justice has been twisted into a tool of repression. Taliban-issued edicts now carry the weight of law, but serve only the purpose of codifying inequality. This is not governance it is a state-sanctioned machinery of gender apartheid.
Rather than engage with domestic or international norms of human rights, the Taliban have constructed a false moral high ground by invoking a politicized and weaponized version of Islamic law. Their edicts are presented as divinely mandated, leaving no room for debate, reform, or dissent. Yet, as prominent Islamic scholars around the world have argued, the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia is not only theologically flawed, but diametrically opposed to Islam’s foundational principles of justice, compassion, and equality. By shielding their misogynistic decrees behind the banner of religion, the Taliban seek to deflect criticism and silence both domestic resistance and international condemnation. But the world must not be fooled: this is not about faith it is about power.
International legal experts and human rights organizations, including the Atlantic Council, have now labeled the Taliban’s system as a clear manifestation of gender apartheid a crime against humanity under international law. Unlike traditional gender discrimination, apartheid refers to the systematic, state-sponsored segregation and subjugation of a specific group, with the intent of rendering them politically and socially obsolete. The Taliban’s policies meet every criterion of this legal definition. They have constructed an environment in which women are banned from attending schools and universities, prohibited from working in most professions, forbidden from traveling without a male guardian, and excluded from parks, gyms, and public life altogether.
This is not cultural conservatism. It is the legalized annihilation of gender equality, executed not through the barrel of a gun, but through the stroke of a pen. Experts have proposed urgent and strategic measures to confront the Taliban’s legal war on women: documenting every instance of rights violations, imposing targeted sanctions on Taliban leaders, conditioning all diplomatic engagement and humanitarian aid on the measurable restoration of women’s rights, and supporting independent media and women-led activist networks. The international community stands at a crossroads. To remain silent is to become complicit in the normalization of gender apartheid. The Taliban have weaponized the law not to bring justice but to entrench tyranny. And unless the world acts decisively, they will succeed in transforming Afghanistan into a legal black hole where half the population lives in sanctioned invisibility.
