The International Criminal Court on Monday (October 5, 2026) unsealed arrest warrants against four senior Taliban leaders, accusing them of the crime against humanity of gender persecution against women, girls and members of the LGBTQI+ community in Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power in 2021.

The court said in a statement that warrants were issued in July and September last year for the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and the head of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani. Also wanted are Education Minister Habibullah Agha and Minister of Higher Education Neda Mohammad Nadim.

The existence of the warrants against Mr. Akhundzada and Mr. Haqqani was revealed last year, but the warrants remained sealed. With the Taliban in control of Afghanistan and the court having no police force to execute warrants, the prospect of any of the suspects being arrested is remote.

Since they took back control of the country, the Taliban have barred women from jobs, most public spaces and education beyond sixth grade. Last year, Mr. Akhundzada banned buildings from having windows looking into places where a woman might sit or stand.

Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the court’s decision.

“Afghanistan does not recognize any court under the title of the “International Court,” nor does it attach any significance to its positions,” he said in a written statement. He added, “we are bound by the rulings of Islamic Sharia and its courts, not by intelligence entities or so-called courts.”

Former ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced in January last year that he had requested warrants for Akhundzada and Haqqani, saying that his applications “recognize that Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”

The four suspects are charged with persecution on gender grounds against “girls, women and other persons nonconforming with the Taliban’s policy on gender, gender identity or expression; and on political grounds against persons perceived as ‘allies of girls and women,’” the court said Monday.

Judges who issued the warrants said that the four suspects, “acting on behalf of the Taliban,” implemented a government policy that “resulted in severe violations of fundamental rights and freedoms of the civilian population of Afghanistan, in connection with conducts of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance.”

The judges said that the Taliban “specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms” including education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion.

“In addition, other persons were targeted because certain expressions of sexuality and/or gender identity were regarded as inconsistent with the Taliban’s policy on gender,” the judges said.

Rights groups applauded last year when the court issued sealed warrants for the two senior Taliban leaders.

The Taliban government defended on Wednesday (September 2, 2026) its ban on protests that has drawn condemnation from rights groups, saying the order complies with Islamic law.

Demonstrations in Afghanistan have been rare since the Taliban returned to power just over five years ago, but the government last month introduced a rule holding that “all types of protests are banned”.

International organisations have decried the law as “ruthless” and a move to suppress any dissent in the country.

Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, during a news conference, said that the “law fully complies with Islamic law”, adding that “protests don’t exist in Islamic law”.

“Protests belong to societies where there are different laws established, for example a democracy or a republic,” Mr. Mujahid said.

Under the Islamic system, he said, people can approach the government with concerns rather than hold demonstrations.

Mr. Mujahid argued the ban “will also protect people from wasting time” and prevent the destruction of private property.

Human Rights Watch late last month slammed the ban as “another step in the Taliban’s ruthless effort to suppress all dissent”.

Amnesty International described the Taliban’s broader series of changes to law enforcement as “another sweeping assault on human rights in Afghanistan”, calling the protest ban “among its most egregious provisions”.

While demonstrations are rare, at least two people were killed in June when security forces reportedly opened fire on a women’s rights protest in the western city of Herat, a group of UN experts said.

The Indian government reaffirmed its “longstanding ties” with Afghanistan and the Afghan people just days before the fifth anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul.

Speaking to the media at the bi-weekly briefing here on Friday (August 14, 2026), Official Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Randhir Jaiswal said: “In the last few months and over a year now, we have had several engagements and several ministerial visits from Afghanistan to India and these have led to strengthening of partnerships in several areas including in development cooperation, trade, connectivity”.

“We have longstanding ties with Afghanistan and the Afghan people, and we look forward to strengthening these ties that we have with them,“ Mr. Jaiswal said in response to a question regarding the Taliban’s reported plans to hold an event at the Afghan Embassy here to mark their coming to power in August 2021.

Noor Ahmed Noor, the Charge d’Affaires of the Afghan Embassy in New Delhi, is scheduled to hold a celebration here on August 17. Though Afghan sources claimed an Indian official would be present at the event, the MEA did not confirm the matter. Officials indicated that a positive posture will be maintained towards the Taliban for the time being as India continues to deal with a hostile Pakistan.

Among the officials and representatives of the Taliban who visited India in the last year were Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Acting Foreign Minister; Nooruddin Azizi, Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce; Noor Jalal Jalali, Minister of Public Health; and Ataullah Omari, Acting Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, who visited in July 2026.

Belgium said on Monday it had issued five visas to a Taliban delegation to attend an ​EU meeting on migration in Brussels, for what would be the first time the EU ‌has hosted the group since the Islamists returned to power five ​years ago.

“These are visas with limited territorial validity and limited ⁠duration: only for Belgium … and only for a single day,” a Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the exact date of the visit would ‌not be communicated for security reasons.

The meeting is expected to focus on ways to deport some Afghan migrants, despite warnings from ‌human rights groups that such engagement could put Afghans at risk and ‌undermine ⁠core EU values.

According to a letter seen by Reuters and ⁠addressed to Abdul Qaher Balkhi, a Taliban foreign ministry spokesman, it will focus on “the return and readmission of Afghan nationals without a right to stay in the European Union”.

The EU’s executive, the ​European Commission, has said the meeting ‌is technical and does not constitute recognition of Taliban rule.

Since returning to power, the Taliban have steadily curtailed rights, restricting women’s freedom of movement, banning girls from education beyond primary school, and enforcing morality laws that limit ‌free expression and access to employment.

Rights organisations ask to abandon plan

Rights ​organizations have asked the European Union to abandon its plans to talk with the Taliban.

“Any engagement with the Taliban needs ⁠to prioritize protecting human rights and accountability — not deporting people to danger there,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The desperate scenes of people – including ‌EU staff – fleeing Afghanistan are a recent memory. It is unconscionable that the EU would now try and deport people to Afghanistan, which has only become more dangerous in the meantime,” said Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.

The EU has not identified which Taliban representatives were invited to the meeting. Several senior Taliban leaders are under EU sanctions.

Humanitarian crisis

Hundreds of thousands ‌of Afghans have sought asylum in Europe since 2021. EU law allows for deportations of ​people convicted of serious crimes or deemed security threats in certain cases, but returns to Afghanistan have been limited due to the lack ⁠of diplomatic relations.

Although Afghans are among the nationalities with the highest asylum recognition ⁠rates in the EU, overall acceptance has tightened as migration policies become more restrictive.

Afghanistan is currently mired in a deep humanitarian crisis. ‌According to the U.N. World Food Programme, more than 17 million Afghans – or one-third of the population – are “food insecure”, while the country is absorbing ​tens of thousands of returnees from Iran and Pakistan.

The United Nations expressed “grave concern” on Thursday (May 21, 2026) about a new law issued by Afghanistan’s Taliban government on separation in marriage which includes provisions on child marriage, saying the code further entrenches discrimination against women and girls.

The government rejected the accusations, saying the decree follows Islamic law and insisting the country has already banned the forced marriage of girls.

Afghanistan’s Justice Ministry published Decree No. 18 “on judicial separation of spouses” last week, which sets out rules for separation of a married couple.

Among its most controversial provisions, it says that the silence of a girl reaching puberty can be interpreted as consent to marriage. It also includes a section on the separation of girls who reach puberty and are married, which “implies that child marriage is permitted,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement.

“This undermines the principle of free and full consent and failing to safeguard the best interests of the child,” it said.

The decree stipulates that a marriage can be ruled invalid “if a father or grandfather has given a minor girl or boy without any dowry, not enough dowry or obscene embezzlement.” It also says that a girl given away in marriage by her father or grandfather to a man who “has not treated her with kindness or is well-known for his bad choices…has the right to approach the court to cancel the marriage contract upon reaching puberty.”

However, if a girl asks her husband for a divorce and he denies it, “then in this case, there are no witnesses with the girl, the husband’s word is valid,” the new law says. She does not need witnesses if she makes the request before a judge.

Women and girls already face widespread discrimination in Afghanistan, with laws dictating how they must dress and behave. They are banned from secondary school and universities and from most jobs, as well as from nearly all leisure activities, including gyms, beauty salons and even from public parks.

“Decree No. 18 is part of a broader and deeply concerning trajectory in which the rights of Afghan women and girls are being eroded,” said Georgette Gagnon, the U.N.’s Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and officer in charge of UNAMA.

While the law allows for women to separate from their husbands, it makes it much harder for them to do so than it does for men.

The decree “operates in a deeply unequal framework: while men retain the unilateral right to divorce, women must pursue complex and restrictive judicial avenues to separate from a spouse,” UNAMA said. “This situation reinforces structural discrimination and limits women’s autonomy in matters fundamental to their dignity, safety, and well-being.” After seizing power in Afghanistan following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-backed forces in 2021, the Taliban announced certain limited rights for women, issuing a decree that included the right for women to an inheritance and to refuse marriage. However, “successive decrees have undermined these protections,” UNAMA said.

The myriad restrictions imposed by the government “have deprived millions of Afghan women and girls of their right to education, weakened economic participation, and deepened poverty, with long-term consequences for Afghanistan’s development,” it added.

The objections from “those who contradict the religion of Islam are not new and we should not pay attention to them,” Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Afghan government, told the RTA state broadcaster in an interview.

Mujahid noted that Afghanistan’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has already issued a previous decree that bans the forced marriage of girls. Afghan courts and the country’s ministry of vice and virtue have investigated thousands of such cases in the past year alone, he said, “which shows the Islamic Emirate’s concern for women’s rights.”