KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has expressed “grave concern” over a new Taliban decree that codifies rules on marital separation, saying it further entrenches systemic discrimination against women and girls.
In a statement on Thursday, UNAMA said Taliban Decree No. 18, the “Code on Judicial Separation of Spouses,” published on May 14 in the official gazette, codifies rules governing marital separation within a “deeply unequal framework.”
Under the decree, men retain the unilateral right to divorce, while women face complex and restrictive judicial procedures to seek separation. The regulation, approved by Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, addresses conditions for divorce, child marriage, and related family matters.
“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, UNAMA’s Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Officer-in-Charge.
Gagnon added that the decree further institutionalizes discrimination. When combined with existing restrictions on girls’ education and women’s public participation, it entrenches a system denying Afghan women and girls autonomy, opportunity, and access to justice.
UNAMA noted that the decree must be viewed within a broader context of measures affecting women’s rights since the Taliban takeover in August 2021. An initial decree in December 2021, UNAMA said, recognized certain rights, such as women’s consent to marriage and inheritance. Successive measures, however, have progressively undermined those protections, restricting women’s autonomy before, during, and after marriage.
Of particular concern, UNAMA said, is the decree’s chapter addressing girls who reach puberty. It implies that child marriage is permitted and allows a girl’s silence upon reaching puberty to be interpreted as consent to marriage. This approach, the mission warned, undermines the principle of free and full consent and fails to safeguard the best interests of the child.
The mission called on Taliban authorities to align domestic laws and practices with international human rights obligations, including safeguarding consent in marriage, eliminating child marriage, ensuring access to justice, and protecting the rights and dignity of all individuals.
Earlier, a coalition of more than 100 human rights and women’s rights organizations called for immediate repeal of the regulation, arguing that it legitimizes child and forced marriage and weakens legal protections for women and minors.
In a joint statement, the groups said several articles of the code include provisions that could be interpreted as recognizing child and forced marriages, and criticized language that treats a girl’s silence after puberty as consent.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid defended the decree, arguing it is based on the group’s interpretation of Islamic law and that external criticism is not important.
Since their return to power nearly five years ago, the Taliban have imposed some of the world’s most restrictive policies on women and girls. These include bans on secondary and higher education for girls, severe limits on female employment and travel without a male guardian, and wide-ranging exclusions from public and political life.
UN experts, rights groups, and activists have repeatedly said the scale and systematic nature of the Taliban’s restrictive measures amount to “gender apartheid,” describing them as an institutionalized system designed to subjugate women solely based on their gender.
