Taliban LEGALIZES Wife Beating—Courts Now Enforce It

Afghanistan’s Taliban regime just formalized what activists have long feared: a legal system that treats women as property, allowing husbands to beat wives and children provided they avoid breaking bones or creating open wounds.

Story Snapshot

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada signed a 60-90 page penal code in February 2026 that legalizes domestic violence as discretionary punishment, abolishing protections from the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law.
The code classifies physical abuse as permissible ta’zir discipline rather than criminal acts, imposing minimal penalties (maximum 15 days) only when injuries involve broken bones or open wounds.
Women seeking justice must navigate impossible barriers: appearing veiled, accompanied by male guardians, and proving abuse in courts run by Taliban clerics who view such violence as Islamic discipline.
The law introduces a caste-based penalty system and criminalizes dissent, threatening 20 lashes and six months imprisonment for insulting Taliban leaders, with two years for failing to report criticism.

From Protection to Persecution: How Women’s Rights Vanished

The 2009 EVAW law represented a fragile achievement under Afghanistan’s US-backed government, criminalizing domestic violence, forced marriage, and rape. That framework collapsed with the Taliban’s August 2021 return to power. The regime methodically dismantled women’s rights through incremental decrees: banning girls from secondary schools beyond sixth grade, prohibiting women from most employment, closing beauty salons and NGOs serving women, and restricting access to parks and public spaces. This February 2026 penal code completes that trajectory, transforming informal persecution into codified state policy. The document circulated to Taliban courts doesn’t merely permit violence; it reclassifies abuse as legitimate correction within a husband’s domain over his household.

The Mechanics of Legal Abuse

The code’s specific provisions reveal calculated cruelty. Husbands may strike wives and children with impunity unless the assault fractures bones or opens wounds requiring medical attention. Even when injuries cross that threshold, perpetrators face merely 15 days detention. The law divides Afghan society into castes including ulama (religious scholars), ashraf (nobility), middle and lower classes, and explicitly references slaves, each category receiving different penalties for identical offenses. Women attempting to report abuse encounter Kafkaesque barriers: they must secure permission from male guardians (mahram) to visit courts, appear fully veiled to display injuries, and often present evidence in the presence of their abusers. Appearing without proper male accompaniment triggers three months imprisonment. Discussing the code itself invites punishment.

Who Holds Power Over Afghan Women’s Lives

Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada authorized this legal architecture, cementing his vision of ideological purity through Sharia interpretation. Taliban courts staffed by clerics enforce the provisions, wielding corporal punishment including public lashings. Rawadari, an exiled Afghan human rights organization, has called for UN intervention to halt implementation, while Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, described the implications as “terrifying” and warned of unchecked Taliban advances. These international voices carry moral weight but minimal practical leverage against a regime that views women as extensions of male authority rather than independent persons. The power imbalance is absolute: women cannot testify effectively, travel freely, or access education or employment that might provide escape routes from abusive households.

The Ripples of Institutionalized Violence

Afghanistan’s economy teeters on collapse, and poverty drives 30 percent of girls out of primary school before they start, funneling them toward child marriages. Over 1.1 million girls remain excluded from secondary education under Taliban decrees. Healthcare access for women has deteriorated catastrophically as the regime bans male doctors from treating female patients while simultaneously restricting women from medical work, creating treatment deserts. The penal code’s caste system particularly targets working-class Afghans, who face harsher corporal punishment and imprisonment than upper castes for identical offenses. Rights advocates identify this as codified gender apartheid, a systematic legal framework that normalizes violence, compels obedience, and perpetuates cycles of abuse across generations. The justice system has transformed into an enforcement mechanism for patriarchal control rather than a venue for resolving disputes or protecting vulnerable populations.

Taliban rules domestic, sexual violence against women, children is legal

For a man to beat his wife or children is now classified as discretionary punishment, or "ta’zir," and not a crime.https://t.co/yoG6Z3hl4e

— JB Slear (@JB_Slear) February 20, 2026

What the Silence Costs

The international community’s muted response emboldens Taliban extremism. Belquis Ahmadi from Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security connects this penal code to broader patterns of slavery and repression, while organizations like the Feminist Majority Foundation frame it as gender apartheid demanding global legal countermeasures. The Taliban justifies these provisions through religious interpretation, claiming discretionary punishment falls within Islamic jurisprudence, a position that ignores centuries of scholarly debate and diverse Muslim legal traditions worldwide. What distinguishes this moment from prior Taliban abuses is formalization: violence against women is no longer tacit policy or individual cruelty but state law distributed to courts with implementation instructions. The code’s February 2026 signing received widespread media coverage, yet no reversal or modification has emerged. Afghan women face a legally sanctioned nightmare, trapped between economic desperation, physical danger, and a justice system designed to silence them.