Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities are turning some of their most extreme practices into an increasingly formal system of law. New rules and decrees have drawn condemnation from human rights organizations for institutionalizing corporal punishment, weakening protections for women and children, permitting child marriage, discriminating against religious minorities and undermining basic guarantees of a fair trial.
Amnesty International raised the alarm again on September 8 during the 63rd session of the UN Human Rights Council. The organization said the Taliban continue to institutionalize their policies through decrees that violate fundamental human rights.
The developments represent more than isolated abuses by individual officials. They point toward a legal system in which severe discrimination and cruel punishment are embedded in the rules themselves.
Torture becomes part of the system
One of the most disturbing measures is the Taliban’s Criminal Procedure Regulation of the Courts, endorsed by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada in January 2026.
According to Amnesty International, the regulation institutionalizes torture and other ill-treatment through corporal punishment. It also permits the death penalty for a wide range of offenses and allows destruction of property as punishment.
International human rights law prohibits torture absolutely. There is no religious, cultural or national-security exception to that prohibition.
The regulation also severely undermines the right to a fair trial. Afghanistan has effectively existed in a legal vacuum since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, dismantled key institutions and rejected much of the country’s previous legal framework.
Instead, decrees based on the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law have increasingly taken its place.
Violence against women receives extraordinarily weak protection
The rules are particularly alarming for Afghan women.
According to Amnesty International, the criminal regulation fails to criminalize physical violence by a husband against his wife unless it produces injuries such as broken bones, wounds or bruises.
That effectively creates an extraordinarily high threshold before certain domestic violence is recognized by the legal system.
This development does not exist in isolation. Taliban authorities have already removed women and girls from much of public life. Girls remain excluded from secondary and higher education, while women face severe restrictions on employment, movement and participation in society.
Other decrees adopted in 2026 have further entrenched inequality within marriage and divorce.
Child marriage receives legal recognition
The Taliban’s rules concerning marriage have also caused international alarm.
A separate 2026 decree governing judicial separation contains provisions addressing girls who reach puberty while already married. The United Nations has warned that this effectively implies that child marriage is permitted.
Even more disturbingly, a girl’s silence upon reaching puberty can be interpreted as consent to the marriage.
That concept is fundamentally incompatible with the principle that marriage requires the free and full consent of both parties. Children are particularly vulnerable to coercion and frequently lack the social, financial and legal power necessary to resist decisions imposed by adults.
The UN has consequently called on Afghanistan’s de facto authorities to eliminate child marriage and protect genuine consent.
Religious dissent can make someone a heretic
The Taliban’s legal framework also threatens freedom of religion and belief.
According to Amnesty International, the criminal regulation describes people holding beliefs contrary to Sunni Islam as heretics. Such provisions further expose religious minorities and dissenters to discrimination under a state system built around one particular interpretation of religion.
Freedom of religion means considerably more than the freedom to practice the religion favored by those in power. It necessarily includes the freedom to adopt another religion, interpret a religion differently or reject religion altogether.
Without those freedoms, religious liberty becomes little more than compulsory conformity.
Slavery explicitly recognized
Perhaps one of the most extraordinary features identified by Amnesty International is that the criminal regulation expressly recognizes slavery.
In the 21st century, a government is therefore constructing a legal framework containing concepts that the international community has spent generations attempting to eradicate.
The regulation also discriminates according to gender, religion, belief and social status while restricting freedom of thought and expression.
These are not merely disagreements over different cultural traditions. Torture, slavery and systematic discrimination violate fundamental principles of international human rights law.
Afghanistan’s repression is becoming institutionalized
The distinction between arbitrary repression and institutionalized repression matters.
An abusive official can violate an otherwise protective law. Something considerably more dangerous happens when the law itself authorizes or legitimizes the abuse.
That is increasingly the concern in Afghanistan.
Women are not simply encountering individual discrimination. Restrictions on their education, employment, movement, marriage and access to justice have increasingly become parts of an interconnected system.
Religious conformity is not merely socially encouraged. Taliban rules increasingly give it legal force.
Corporal punishment is not simply occurring outside the judicial system. It is being incorporated into it.
The result is a country in which some of the institutions that should protect people from abuse can instead become instruments for administering it.
Afghanistan demonstrates why universal human rights must remain universal. Torture does not become acceptable when justified by religion. Child marriage does not become harmless when recognized by a decree. Discrimination does not become justice when written into law.
And oppression does not cease to be oppression simply because those imposing it call it morality.
