On the morning of August 15, 2021, many woke up to scenes of terror and devastation flowing out of Kabul. As the Taliban retook control of the country overnight, a whole generation of Afghan women who had grown up studying, working, and dreaming within the confines of restricted freedoms gained over two decades saw their worlds fall apart. It is this fear that has been solidified into something more frightful: an imposed absence of women from the public arena. But there is an institutional reaction this time, which does not see this as merely a tragedy, but also a crime. On July 8, 2025, Hibatullah Akhundzada, Taliban Supreme Leader, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, Taliban Chief Justice, were charged with crimes against humanity of gender persecution and consequently, arrest warrants were issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is a reckoning long overdue, one that not only vindicates the ordeal of Afghan women but also repositions it as a matter of international criminal accountability.

The ICC found reasonable grounds to believe that these two leaders are criminally responsible for policies and orders that have, since 2021, targeted women and girls because of their gender, depriving them of their rights to education, privacy, freedom of movement, expression, conscience, and religion. These are not isolated decrees but part of a state apparatus, meticulously designed and brutally enforced. Since seizing power, the Taliban have banned girls above the age of twelve from attending school, barred women from working in national and international NGOs, shut down beauty salons, restricted women from traveling without a male guardian, and forbidden them from visiting parks, gyms, and even from raising their voices in public. The UN has rightly described this as gender apartheid. It is not merely about excluding women; it is about redefining their legal and social existence to be invisible.

The statistics paint a grim picture. According to the UN, over 2.5 million Afghan girls are currently out of school, estimated to be 80 per cent of all school-age girls. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where girls are formally banned from secondary and higher education. But education is only the most visible part of the Taliban’s broader campaign to eliminate women from society. Thousands of women have........

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