Case Explained: Taliban new penal code legalizes domestic violence against women – JURIST – Legal Perspective

The Taliban has quietly enacted a new penal code that allows husbands to physically punish their wives and children as long as it doesn’t cause broken bones or open wounds.

The Rawadari human rights organization exposed the document, known as the “Criminal Procedure Code for Courts” (De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama) last month. This penal code, signed by Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada on January 7 and circulated to provincial courts across Afghanistan for implementation, encompasses three sections, 10 chapters, and 119 articles.

The Code has adopted a discriminatory framework regarding violence against women. Specifically, Article 32 restricts criminal liability to instances where a husband beats the woman with a stick and this act results in severe injury such as “a wound or bodily bruising.” Even in such cases, women bear the burden of proof before the judge and the resulting penalty is a fifteen days’ imprisonment. This penal code has not explicitly prohibited other types of physical violence, psychological violence, and sexual violence against women.

In addition, Clause 5 of Article 4 distinguishes between “hadd” punishments and “tazir” punishments to authorize husbands and ‘masters’ to execute the latter. Hadd punishments are prescribed by Islamic religious texts, whereas tazir punishments are not. This delegation of punitive power directly legitimizes domestic violence, granting men legal cover to physically discipline women.

Similarly, Article 34 stipulates that if a woman repeatedly visits her father or other relatives without her husband’s consent, or refuses to return upon his demand, she is liable for a three-month prison sentence. Crucially, this legal liability extends to any family members who have facilitated her stay or prevented her return, thereby criminalizing the act of providing refuge to a female relative. In the case of women who take refuge at their parents’ house and relatives’ homes from domestic violence, this provision has stripped away the only remaining protection in absence of formal and legal remedies.

Since the 2021 Taliban takeover, rights groups and international bodies have reported the human rights violations against women in Afghanistan. A report by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls documents the systemic erasure of Afghan women from education, employment, public life, and freedom of movement, asserting that these actions rise to the level of ‘femi-genocide.”

On December 11 2025, the Permanent People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan in the Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the Taliban’s de facto authorities have committed crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

The Tribunal characterized these actions as a “coordinated, State-level campaign” executed with the intent “to erase women from public life and to restructure Afghan society around male supremacy.” Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have issued over 250 edicts and decrees, with at least 157 specifically targeting the rights of women and girls, creating what the judges observed as a “deliberate” system of “structural injustice.”