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The Taliban’s New Criminal Regulation Legalizes Slavery, Violence, and Repression of Women

January 30, 2026

• Belquis Ahmadi

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On January 7, 2026, the Taliban’s emir issued a two-point decree formally endorsing a new Criminal Procedural Regulations for Courts (119 articles, 3 chapters, 10 sections) and announcing that it would take effect immediately upon signing. The regulation was not publicly announced, debated, or widely circulated by the authorities; instead, its existence came to light only after Rawadari issued a statement and published a copy of the regulation in its original Pashtu language on their website on January 21. The regulation became publicly known just two days before the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo visited Kabul (from January 23–25), where she held in person meetings with the de facto Taliban ministers as part of ongoing engagement under the UN-led Doha Process. While in Kabul, DiCarlo also held a less than one-hour virtual meeting with a few Afghan women from civil society.

Beyond raising concerns about the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education and restrictions on women’s employment—including the November 2025 ban on Afghan women working for UN agencies—DiCarlo made no public reference to the Taliban’s newly adopted regulation. So far, Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett is the only UN official to raise concerns over the regulation. This silence persisted despite strong warnings from human rights organizations about the regulation’s most alarming provisions. These include the further subjugation of women, the normalization of violence against women, the legalization of slavery, the formal division of society into “free” and “enslaved” persons, further classification into four social classes, with effective impunity for religious scholars and the so-called nobles, and the imposition of harsher punishments on those designated as “lower class.” 

Five Things to know about Taliban’s New Regulation

1. The Regulation Institutionalizes an Authoritarian System of Control

The new regulation goes far beyond regulating courts or criminal procedure. It codifies an ideological system in which punishment, surveillance, and coercion are core instruments of governance. By embedding vague moral offenses, expansive criminal liability, and severe penalties into law, the Taliban transform repression into a legal duty. Dissent, nonconformity, and even private life are placed under state and community control. In practice, the regulation renders ordinary behavior criminal and converts citizens into enforcers of Taliban ideology.

Article 4(5): The enforcement of ḥadd (fixed punishments prescribed under Sharia) punishments pertains to the Imam, but tazeer (discretionary punishments determined by an authority) punishments may also be carried out by the husband and the master.

The Taliban’s New Regulation Contradicts the Cairo Declaration’s Core Guarantees

The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, adopted by member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, including Afghanistan in 1990, affirms inherent human dignity and equal protection under the law. The Taliban’s new regulation–which criminalizes private life and nonconformity, and relies on community surveillance rather than lawful procedures–directly contradicts these guarantees and undermines basic due-process principles.

Article 4(5) is especially difficult to reconcile with the Cairo Declaration because it explicitly authorizes tazeer punishment by a husband and a master. Even under Islamic legal traditions that recognize tazeer as discretionary, it is ordinarily treated as an instrument of public authority subject to limits and judicial supervision—not a license for private actors to punish. The “master” language also collides with the Cairo Declaration’s categorical prohibition on enslavement, exploitation, and humiliation. 

The Regulation is in Direct Breach of International Human Rights Law

Under international human rights law, the pattern described—broad criminalization of morality and dissent, surveillance, and coercion—implicates multiple protected rights: privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, liberty and security of person, and fair trial guarantees (reflected across the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). When “ordinary behavior” is made criminal through vague concepts, it opens the door to arbitrary enforcement, undermines legal certainty, and weakens due process.

Article 4(5) raises serious concerns because it authorizes punishment by private individuals (husbands) and by a “master,” which is incompatible with Afghanistan’s obligation under international human rights law to prevent violence, cruel or degrading treatment, and impunity. This regulation empowers individual citizens to administer punishment under the ‘prevention of vice’, which risks torture or ill-treatment. International accountability mechanisms prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment and obligates states to protect individuals from such abuses.

The “master” terminology also directly conflicts with the absolute ban on slavery and servitude in international law. 

2. The Regulation Explicitly Abandons Equality and Divides Society by Status

The regulation explicitly abandons the principle of equal protection under the law. It divides Afghan society into “free” and “enslaved” persons and further stratifies the population into four classes: religious scholars, elites such as tribal elders and merchants, the middle class, and those designated as “lower class.”

Legal consequences are determined by social status rather than conduct. Elites are subject to warnings or summons, while poorer individuals face imprisonment, intimidation, and corporal punishment. This codified hierarchy institutionalizes discrimination and ensures that the most marginalized bear the harshest penalties.

Article 9: Tazeer with regard to the status of the offender, has the following levels:

• Tazeer for ulema and first-degree people: The tazeer for this group is carried out by the judge in the form of a warning and awareness-raising; that is, the person is informed that they have committed such and such acts.
• Tazeer for the elite, such as tribal elders and merchants: The tazeer for this group is carried out by the judge through a formal warning and summoning to the court.
• Tazeer for the middle class of society: The tazeer for this group is carried out by summoning to the court and imprisonment.
• Tazeer for the lower class of society: The tazeer for this group is carried out through threats and beating; however, if the tazeer reaches the maximum number of lashes—such as thirty-nine lashes—the offender shall not be struck on a single part of the body.

Enslave is also mentioned in Article 15: Whether the offender is free or enslaved, male or female, Muslim or non-Muslim, adult or child—if a crime has no prescribed ḥadd punishment, the offender shall be subjected to tazeer for that same offense.

Contradiction with Islamic Principles of Equality and Dignity

Article 9 of the Taliban’s new regulation establishes a punishment regime explicitly based on social status, dividing society into religious scholars, elites, middle-class individuals, and those designated as “lower class,” with progressively harsher penalties imposed on those lower in the hierarchy, including corporal punishment. This approach directly contradicts the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which affirms equality before the law and universal human dignity, as well as long-standing Islamic legal principles that emphasize musāwāt (equality) and ‘adl (justice). Classical Islamic jurisprudence rejects preferential treatment based on social rank, and prophetic teachings underscore that no individual—regardless of status—is exempt from accountability.

By making social position, rather than conduct, the basis for punishment, Article 9 transforms judicial discretion into a mechanism of structural discrimination.

Similarly, Article 15 further compounds these violations by explicitly recognizing individuals as “free or enslaved,” treating enslavement as a lawful status within the criminal justice system. This directly violates the Cairo Declaration’s categorical rejection of slavery and contradicts contemporary Islamic scholarly consensus, which views slavery as incompatible with Islamic ethics centered on human dignity (karāmah).

Taken together, Articles 9 and 15 institutionalize a legal order in which human worth varies by class, physical punishment is normalized for the poor, and enslavement is legally acknowledged. Rather than reflecting Islamic justice, these provisions function as political instruments of control, cloaked in religious language, and fundamentally undermine core Islamic values of equality, dignity, and fairness.

Incompatibility of the Regulation with International Human Rights Law

Articles 9 and 15 of the Taliban’s new regulation directly contravene core principles of international human rights law by institutionalizing discrimination, coercion, and abuse. This framework violates international human rights, stipulated in the UDHR and ICCPR,which prohibit discrimination based on social origin and guarantee equal protection under the law. By authorizing flogging, threats, and imprisonment without clear safeguards, proportionality, or individualized assessment, the regulation also breaches absolute prohibitions on torture, cruel or degrading punishment, arbitrary detention, and denial of due process.

Article 15 compounds these violations by explicitly recognizing individuals as “free or enslaved,” treating enslavement as a lawful status within the criminal justice system. Any legal acknowledgment of slavery is per se unlawful under international human rights law and violates norms reflected in the UDHR, ICCPR, and the Slavery Convention.

Taken together, Articles 9 and 15 establish a legal order in which human worth is determined by class, physical punishment is normalized for the marginalized, and fundamental rights are systematically denied. When enforced as state policy, this framework amounts to institutionalized persecution and may contribute to crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute. Rather than isolated violations, these provisions reflect a deliberate legal architecture of repression that cannot be reconciled with Afghanistan’s international obligations and reinforces the case for international accountability.

3. Legalizing Vigilante Violence and Criminalizing Women’s Autonomy

Under the new regulation, violence is not only tolerated but delegated. Any Muslim who witnesses a perceived “sin” is authorized to impose tazeer on the spot as a duty to “prevent vice,” while husbands are explicitly empowered to punish their wives. The regulation exposes individuals to arbitrary violence by family members, neighbors, and strangers, normalizing abuse as a religious and legal obligation rather than a crime.

The regulation further treats women as property with no legal agency of their own. Under Article 32, “If a husband strikes his wife with excessive beating resulting in fracture, injury, or the appearance of bruising on her body, and the wife proves her claim before the judge, the husband is deemed a criminal; the judge shall sentence him to fifteen days of imprisonment.” By contrast, harm to animals carries a harsher penalty, signaling that women’s bodily integrity is afforded less protection than animal welfare. (See section below for further analysis on Article 70).

Article 34 criminalizes women who leave their marital home without their husbands’ permission: “If a wife, without the permission of her husband and without a lawful justification, repeatedly goes to her father’s house or the house of other relatives and stays there, and despite the husband’s request and a judicial decision, the father or other relatives refuse to return the wife to the husband, both the wife and those who obstruct are deemed criminals; the judge shall sentence both to three months of imprisonment.”

Article 58 mandates that “The judge shall sentence an apostate woman, for the purpose of compelling her to accept Islam, to life imprisonment, accompanied by ten lashes every three days.” The provision applies only to women, explicitly institutionalizing gender-based punishment for religious belief. It also ignores the reality that accusations of apostasy require little evidence and are easily weaponized. Afghanistan’s recent history demonstrates the lethal consequences of such accusations. In 2015,  Farkhunda Malikzada was brutally murdered by a mob after being falsely accused of burning the Qur’an—an act later proven never to have occurred. That killing shocked the conscience of the country and illustrated how unfounded religious accusations can rapidly escalate into mass violence. By codifying punishment for apostasy, Article 58 legitimizes this danger, placing women at constant risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial harm based solely on allegation.

Taken together, these provisions reduce women to dependents under male control, deny them autonomy over their bodies, movement, and beliefs, and institutionalize violence as a tool of social discipline. The regulation does not recognize women as rights-holders, but as subjects to be controlled, punished, and returned—by force if necessary.

Taliban’s Regulation is a Distortion of Islamic Justice and Human Dignity

The legalization of vigilante punishment under the banner of “preventing vice” stands in direct tension with the Cairo Declaration’s core commitments to human dignity, justice, and lawful process. While the Declaration affirms that rights and duties operate within an Islamic framework, it does not permit private individuals to administer punishment. On the contrary, it emphasizes human dignity, the prohibition of humiliation and abuse, and the principle that justice must be exercised through lawful authority. Authorizing any Muslim to impose tazeer punishment—and explicitly empowering husbands to punish their wives—undermines these principles by shifting coercive power from accountable institutions to private actors.

Moreover, the provisions of Articles 32, 34 and 58 contradict the Declaration’s rejection of exploitation and humiliation and its emphasis on the family as a unit founded on dignity and mutual responsibility, not coercion. Normalizing violence against women as a religious duty erodes the ethical foundations of justice and human dignity that underpin Islamic human rights discourse. The regulation instrumentalizes religion to legitimize abuse and impunity.

Taliban’s Regulation is a Direct Violation of Non-Derogable Human Rights Norms

Under international human rights law, authorizing vigilante punishment constitutes a grave violation of multiple non-derogable norms (right that can never be suspended, limited, or taken away under any circumstances). Empowering private individuals to impose physical punishment—particularly against women—breaches the absolute prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Further, Articles 32, 34 and 58 also violate rights to security of person, equality before the law, and freedom from discrimination, as women are disproportionately targeted and deprived of protection. The regulation converts private abuse into state-sanctioned violence, exposing women to systematic harm and reinforcing patterns that may amount to persecution when implemented as official policy.

4. Women’s Lives Are Valued Less Than Animals Under the New Regulation

The new regulation establishes a stark and disturbing hierarchy of harm. Article 70 criminalizes forcing animals or birds to fight and mandates a sentence of five months’ imprisonment for such acts. “A person who causes animals—such as dogs, camels, sheep, and similar animals—or birds such as chickens, quail, or partridge to fight is deemed a criminal; the judge shall sentence him to five months of imprisonment.”

This disparity sends a message to society that under the Taliban’s legal system, violence against women is treated as less serious than cruelty to animals. Such a hierarchy reflects the Taliban’s broader ideology, in which women are denied full legal personhood and their bodily integrity is afforded minimal protection.

Contradicting Islamic Principles of Justice and Dignity

The disparity in penalties—where harm to animals is punished more severely than serious violence against women—stands in clear contradiction to the Cairo Declaration’s affirmation of inherent human dignity. The Declaration recognizes the sanctity and worth of every human being and places strong emphasis on protection from humiliation, abuse, and injustice. From an Islamic ethical perspective, while cruelty to animals is rightly condemned, human dignity occupies a higher moral and legal status. Islamic principles of justice and prevention of harm requires that violence against women be treated as a serious offense demanding meaningful accountability. This regulation instrumentalizes religious language to justify a legal order that diminishes women’s moral and legal standing.

Taliban’s Regulation Institutionalizes Impunity for Violence Against Women

Under international human rights law, the unequal valuation of harm reflected throughout the regulation and particularly Article 70 violates the fundamental principle of human dignity and the obligation to protect individuals from gender-based violence. Treating severe domestic abuse as a minor offense—while imposing stronger penalties for animal cruelty—signals Taliban’s institutional tolerance of violence against women and reinforces impunity.

This disparity also constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex, undermining women’s right to equal protection under the law. International standards recognize domestic violence as a serious human rights violation with profound physical and psychological consequences. By legally downgrading such violence, the regulation entrenches systemic inequality and contributes to a broader pattern of gender-based persecution when enforced as state policy.

5. Dissent, Belief, Speech, and Silence Are Criminalized by Design

The new Regulation systematically criminalizes dissent, expression, and even inaction, replacing individual responsibility with coerced surveillance and punishment. Article 18 imposes severe sanctions for criticism of the Taliban’s highest authority: “A person who insults the Imam is deemed a criminal; the judge shall sentence him, in addition to 39 lashes, to one year of imprisonment.” This provision extinguishes any space for political accountability or dissent at the highest level.

Freedom of expression is further suppressed under Article 23(2), which provides, “If a person insults high-ranking Emirate personnel, the judge shall sentence him, in addition to twenty 20 lashes, to six months of imprisonment.”

Together, Articles 18 and 23 establish a system of punishment that criminalizes criticism of leadership and public officials alike.

The regulation also criminalizes silence and inaction. Article 24 provides, “If a person witnesses or has knowledge of subversive gatherings or consultations of opponents of the system, but neither personally takes action against them nor informs the relevant Emirate authorities, such witnessing or knowledgeable person shall be deemed a criminal; the judge shall sentence him to two years of imprisonment.” 

By punishing mere knowledge and failure to report, this provision transforms ordinary social relations into sources of criminal liability and forces families, neighbors, colleagues, and communities to police one another.

Finally, Article 48 extends repression into private and family life by authorizing punishment even in the absence of any criminal conduct. “Tazeer for the sake of public interest is permissible even without the occurrence of a crime; for example, the tazeer imposed by a father upon his ten-year-old child for abandoning prayer and similar matters; however, such tazeer must conform to the levels specified in Article Nine of this Regulation.” Article 9 establishes the framework for tazeer based on social stratification, setting the levels of punishment that later provisions rely on and enabling discriminatory enforcement across society.

Taliban’s Regulation is a Distortion of Islamic Principles of Belief and Justice

The criminalization of dissent, belief, and silence under the new regulation is incompatible with the Cairo Declaration’s core guarantees of human dignity, justice, and moral accountability. While the Declaration situates rights within an Islamic framework, it does not permit punishment for belief, conscience, or mere awareness of alleged wrongdoing. Article 24’s requirement that individuals report or act against perceived “subversive” activity collapses the distinction between moral responsibility and coercive enforcement, replacing lawful justice with compulsory denunciation. This undermines the Declaration’s emphasis on fairness, proportionality, and individual culpability.

Taliban’s New Regulation Enforces Ideology Through Law

The combined effect of Articles 9, 18, 23(2), 24, and 48, establishes a legal regime that criminalizes dissent, expression, belief, silence, and private conduct. By punishing criticism of leaders, compelling religious observance, authorizing corporal punishment, and criminalizing failure to report vaguely defined “subversive” activity, the regulation violates multiple binding and non-derogable norms of international human rights law. These provisions directly contravene protections for freedom of expression and opinion, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture.

The regulation also authorizes arbitrary detention, suppresses freedom of association and assembly, intrudes into private and family life, and abandons core due process guarantees. By permitting punishment without an underlying criminal offense, relying on vague and overbroad concepts, and tying tazeer to social status, it violates the principles of legality, proportionality, and equality before the law. When implemented as state policy, this coordinated framework of repression may amount to systematic persecution, engaging international criminal law standards, including persecution as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute.

The Impact of Taliban’s Laws on Society, Stability, and Afghanistan’s Future

Taken as a whole, the Taliban’s new criminal regulation represents a decisive shift toward governance through fear, hierarchy, and coercion. By criminalizing autonomy, dissent, belief, and even silence, while legitimizing private violence and social surveillance, the regulation fractures Afghan society at its core. It replaces trust with suspicion, law with ideology, and justice with punishment based on class, gender, and conformity. Families are transformed into enforcement units, communities into monitoring networks, and citizens into instruments of repression.

The psychological impact—particularly on women and girls—is profound and long lasting. Constant exposure to surveillance, threats, and legalized discrimination and violence in both private and public spaces create a climate of chronic fear, trauma, learned helplessness, and erosion of self-worth and personal agency.

For children raised under such a system, violence and inequality are normalized as law and social order, shaping a generation taught to accept coercion, discrimination, and the systematic subordination of women as ordinary and inevitable realities of life.

From a stability perspective, the regulation gravely undermines Afghanistan’s prospects for peace and development. A legal system that normalizes discrimination, suppresses dissent, and legitimizes abuse cannot generate durable stability. Instead, it fuels grievance, accelerates the exodus of skilled professionals and young people, consolidates gender apartheid, and further isolates the country. More broadly, by embedding extremist interpretations of religion into governance, the Taliban risk legitimizing similar models elsewhere, empowering violent and authoritarian Islamist groups globally to present repression as lawful rule.

Recommendations: What The International Community Could Do

The United Nations:

• Publicly acknowledge and condemn the regulation. Issue a clear UN statement that provisions authorizing private punishment, criminalizing women’s mobility, and recognizing “enslaved” status violate fundamental human rights and cannot be normalized through engagement.
• Integrate the regulation into UN reporting and protection mandates. Make the regulation a standing item in UNAMA and OHCHR reporting to the Security Council and Human Rights Council, with regular assessment of its implementation and impact.
• Condition all engagement on concrete reversals. Tie participation in the Doha Process and other UN-facilitated dialogues to measurable benchmarks, including suspension of private violence provisions, repeal of laws criminalizing women’s movement and shelter, and an end to corporal punishment.

International Stakeholders

• Publicly affirm that legal frameworks institutionalizing discrimination and private violence will not be treated as legitimate governance and will trigger consequences.
• Coordinate Magnitsky-style asset freezes and travel bans against Taliban officials responsible for drafting, endorsing, and enforcing this law—particularly those overseeing courts, morality enforcement, and detention facilities, as well as individuals who have publicly defended or promoted it.
• Support all available legal avenues, including the ICC, the ICJ, and the exercise of universal jurisdiction, to hold the Taliban leadership and de facto authorities accountable for serious violations of international law.
• Condition funding and diplomatic engagement, and require verifiable steps—such as suspending the most abusive provisions, guaranteeing women’s access to humanitarian work, and protecting women seeking shelter—before any expansion of diplomatic or economic engagement.
• Invest in civil society and women-led organizations providing services to women, children and other vulnerable populations.

To Members of the Organization of Islamic Conference and Neighboring States

• Operationalize the International Islamic Court of Justice by finalizing its rules of procedure, appointing judges, allocating a dedicated budget, and establishing a docket to review the Taliban’s interpretation and enforcement of Sharia that contravenes Islamic principles of human dignity, justice, and equality.
• Reject the regulation as a dangerous precedent. Regional governments, especially those claiming Islamic legitimacy—should publicly distance themselves from provisions that legalize vigilantism, degrade women’s rights, and revive slavery language. Silence risks endorsement.
• Issue coordinated statements by foreign ministries, OIC bodies, and leading Islamic councils declaring that vigilantism, class-based punishment, coercion of belief, tolerance of violence against women and revival of enslaved status contradict Islamic ethics and contemporary Islamic consensus.
• Support religious scholars and institutions that can credibly rebut Taliban’s extremist legal interpretations.
• Establish an independent panel of respected jurists from diverse schools to issue a reasoned legal opinion assessing the regulation against Qur’anic principles and Prophetic practice.

Belquis Ahmadi is a human rights lawyer, researcher, women’s rights advocate, and an independent consultant who has authored numerous policy and analytical works on women’s rights, women, peace and security, extremism, and justice.