Five years after the Taliban took Kabul on 15 August 2021, restrictions that began as decrees have been written into Afghan law, and the country remains the only one in the world where girls are barred from education beyond the sixth grade. Human Rights Watch, releasing a timeline of abuses covering the five-year period, said the movement has systematically dismantled the rights of women and girls and entrenched one of the world’s worst human rights crises. Alongside it sits a severe humanitarian emergency: about 40 percent of the population needs urgent aid.
What the new laws do
On 4 January 2026 the Taliban issued a criminal procedure code that defines Muslims exclusively as followers of the Hanafi school and describes other religious communities, Shia Muslims among them, as heretics. The code carries severe penalties intended to silence dissent. A separate law on preachers obliges clerics to adhere to the Hanafi school alone, tightening control over religious expression. Taken together, the two texts embed religious discrimination in the country’s legal framework.
The same code also narrows protection against domestic violence. Only beating described as excessive is now recognised as domestic violence against women, which leaves victims of other forms of abuse without a route to justice.
How the rules are enforced
Since 2021 the authorities have restricted women’s work, movement and participation in public life as part of a broader system of social control and suppression of dissent. Enforcement has run through the morality police, which has raided workplaces, monitored public spaces and arbitrarily detained women accused of breaking dress rules.
What is being asked of governments
Fereshta Abbasi, the organisation’s Afghanistan researcher, described the fifth anniversary as a bleak measure of what impunity has cost, and said governments should go beyond statements of concern and press for justice for serious crimes in Afghanistan, including the crime against humanity of gender persecution.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
