By Salma Abdelaziz and Lauren Kent, CNN
(CNN) — The International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Taliban officials for alleged gender-based crimes, as the group continues to crack down on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
In a statement on Thursday, the ICC prosecutor’s office said that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Supreme Leader of the Taliban, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the Chief Justice of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds.”
The Netherlands-based court does not have its own enforcement mechanism for arrest warrants and has relied on the support of signatory countries to make arrests.
Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan again in August 2021, women and girls have been essentially erased from public life.
The Taliban government initially presented itself as more moderate than the version of the group that ruled in the 90s, even saying it would allow women to continue their education.
Instead, the hardline Islamist group has done an about-face and banned women from going to university, closed secondary schools and beauty salons, and stopped women from working at NGOs, including at the United Nations.
One of the latest decrees from the Taliban government says new buildings must not be constructed with windows through which women can be seen. Existing buildings with windows must be walled up or covered. “Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the government.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) welcomed the arrest warrants on Thursday, calling them “a reminder that justice can prevail.”
“The Taliban have been systematically denying women and girls of Afghanistan their fundamental rights for the past three and a half years. It’s time for them to be held accountable for these violations,” Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghanistan researcher for HRW, told CNN.
“We are also hoping to see the ICC expand its investigation for other grave abuses, including those committed by international military forces and the Islamic State in Afghanistan,” she added.
No country formally recognizes the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan, but some nations, such as Russia, China and Pakistan, have established diplomatic ties with the group.
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