The Taliban has signed into law a sweeping new penal code that effectively legalises domestic violence against women in Afghanistan, allows husbands to physically punish their wives and children without criminal liability, and establishes a rigid social hierarchy in which punishments are determined by class rather than the severity of the offence.
The 90-page document, titled the Criminal Procedure Code for Courts in its English translation from Pashtu, was signed by Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada on January 7, 2026, and immediately distributed to provincial courts across Afghanistan for implementation. The code only became public in late January 2026 after Rawadari, an Afghan human rights organisation operating in exile, obtained the original Pashtu text and published it with a detailed legal analysis.
Under Articles 32 and 34, the provisions that have drawn the most international alarm, husbands are legally permitted to administer physical punishment to their wives and children classified as discretionary discipline, provided it does not result in broken bones, open wounds, or visible bruising. Where serious injury does occur, the maximum prison sentence for the husband is 15 days. To reach even that minimal threshold, a woman must prove her case in court, appear fully veiled, be accompanied by a male guardian, and present her injuries physically to a male judge. In the majority of domestic violence cases, the male guardian required to accompany the woman to court is the same husband accused of the assault.
The code simultaneously criminalises women who attempt to seek refuge from abuse. Article 34 stipulates that a woman who visits her relatives without her husband’s permission, or who refuses to return home on his demand, can be imprisoned for up to three months. Family members who shelter her face criminal liability as well.
Article 9 creates a formal social hierarchy that determines punishment not by the nature of the crime but by the class of the offender. Religious scholars are subject only to advice. Members of the elite face a formal court summons and advice. The middle class face imprisonment for the same offence. Those categorised as lower class face imprisonment combined with corporal punishment. Corporal punishments are to be administered by Islamic clerics rather than the state correctional services.
The code also uses the term Ghulam, or slave, and explicitly distinguishes between the rights of free and enslaved persons, granting masters the power to impose discretionary punishment on those under their authority. Rights organisations including Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security said this effectively reintroduces legally sanctioned slavery into the Afghan judicial system, a concept long prohibited under international law.
The new code abolishes the 2009 Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW), which had been introduced under the previous United States-backed government and provided foundational protections against forced marriage, rape, and gender-based violence.
The Taliban has also ruled that discussing the new penal code is itself a criminal offence, a measure rights groups say is designed to prevent internal dissent and suppress any organised challenge to the code’s implementation.
International condemnation has been swift but, advocates say, insufficient. Rawadari has called on the United Nations (UN) and international bodies for an immediate halt to the code’s implementation and use of all available legal instruments to prevent it from taking permanent effect. Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, wrote that the implications of the code for women and girls were “simply terrifying,” and questioned whether the international community would act to prove the Taliban wrong in its assumption that no one would stop them.
Actor Meryl Streep, speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, said Afghan women had been stripped of freedoms that even animals in the country enjoy, noting that women were barred from public parks while wildlife roamed freely.
The Feminist Majority Foundation described the code as a blueprint for governance through fear, warning that by embedding violence, surveillance, and discrimination into law, the Taliban had transformed repression into official state policy. The Georgetown institute said the Taliban’s treatment of severe domestic abuse as a minor offence, while imposing stronger penalties for animal cruelty, demonstrated institutional tolerance of violence against women that constituted sex-based discrimination and a violation of human dignity under international human rights standards.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban has banned girls from secondary and higher education, restricted women from most forms of employment, prohibited women from speaking in public spaces, and ordered women to remain fully covered in all outdoor settings.
