KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Taliban authorities have publicly flogged 2,745 people, including hundreds of women, across Afghanistan over the past four years, according to a report by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO) released on Tuesday.
The report, titled “Whips of Power, Spectacle of Control: Documenting the Taliban’s Public Floggings, 2022-2026,” recorded 633 incidents of public flogging between February 2022 and April 2026.
AHRDO said 1,761 of those flogged were men, 422 were women, while the gender of 562 others was not specified. The punishments were imposed for what the organization described as “discriminatory and illegal charges,” including women appearing in public without a male guardian (mahram), same-sex relations, extramarital relations, leaving home, and alleged moral corruption.
Public floggings are often carried out in front of groups of spectators, the report stated, intensifying the humiliation, social stigma and psychological harm inflicted on those punished. AHRDO said the practice has become a systematic tool of punishment, intimidation and social control applied throughout the country.
The organization also documented serious violations of fair trial rights, including arbitrary detention, forced confessions, and the denial of access to lawyers, evidence and witnesses. The report is based on documented cases and 23 personal testimonies from victims.
AHRDO’s legal analysis concluded that public flogging violates numerous fundamental human rights, among them freedom from torture and ill-treatment, the right to due process and a fair trial, the right to privacy, and freedoms of movement, association, assembly and expression.
AHRDO called for accountability for those responsible for the floggings and other rights abuses. It urged governments, international human rights institutions, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, the International Criminal Court and other organizations to strengthen independent monitoring, investigate the cases, support victims and take steps to hold perpetrators to account.
The organization also demanded that the Taliban immediately and permanently abolish the practice of flogging, and reverse all decrees, laws, directives and policies that permit public flogging for any alleged crimes or conduct under any circumstances.
A year after seizing power in August 2021, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered the reinstatement of Sharia-based corporal punishments, including public flogging, stoning and public amputations for certain offenses. Since then, the authorities have regularly carried out such punishments across Afghanistan.
The United Nations and international rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have repeatedly condemned the punishments as cruel, inhuman and degrading. They have called for an immediate end to public floggings and other forms of corporal punishment.
Taliban authorities defend the practice as consistent with their interpretation of Islamic law. They say it is necessary to deter crime and maintain social order, and have rejected international criticism as biased against Islam and as interference in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.
