KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The Malala Fund has condemned the Taliban’s newly issued Criminal Procedure Code as a further escalation in the systematic repression of women and girls in Afghanistan, warning that it entrenches “gender apartheid” into law.
In a statement on Monday, the education advocacy group, co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, said the code, together with the Taliban’s earlier morality law, creates a legal framework designed to control, punish, and exclude women from public life.
The fund said the code authorizes physical punishment, weakens due process protections, and grants both officials and private individuals broad powers to enforce compliance. It criminalizes women’s movement, expression, and autonomy, while reducing accountability for violence against women, effectively legitimizing abuse.
“This is gender apartheid,” the fund said.
“A country cannot progress when policies and institutions lock women and girls out of public life and strip away their basic freedoms,” Yousafzai said, emphasizing her support for Afghan girls who continue to seek education and express themselves despite restrictions.
“We must come together to reject gender apartheid. Leaders must urgently step up, stand with the people of Afghanistan, and hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes,” she added.
Sahar Halaimzai, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Malala Fund, said the code demonstrates that Taliban rule is not transitional but a “deliberate system built on control, exclusion, subordination and legalized violence.”
“The Taliban are the outcome of years of international decisions that traded away the rights and agency of Afghan women and girls,” Halaimzai said. “Their legal system reflects those failures, not the will of Afghan society and not an inevitable cultural reality.”
According to rights group Rawadari, “the Criminal Procedures Code for Courts,” recently approved by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, includes three sections, 10 chapters, and 119 articles. The code removes key legal safeguards such as the right to a defense lawyer, the right to remain silent, and the right to compensation, while expanding corporal punishment and allowing penalties with limited judicial oversight.
Provisions directly affecting women and girls include restrictions on movement and personal conduct, recognizing only limited forms of physical harm while ignoring psychological and sexual abuse, and granting authorities and private individuals the power to punish behavior deemed sinful. Rights groups say these measures expose women and girls to arbitrary punishment, public harassment, and institutionalized abuse.
The Malala Fund called for the code to be recognized as a serious human rights violation and evidence of gender apartheid, warning that international engagement with the Taliban that ignores this legal framework risks legitimizing repression and encouraging abuses globally.
The Taliban have not responded to the statement. The group’s authorities have previously defended their laws, saying they are based on their interpretation of Islamic principles.
