The Afghanistan & Central Asian Association (ACAA), an award-winning UK-based refugee charity headquartered in London and the largest charity supporting Afghan and Central Asian communities in the United Kingdom, has expressed serious concern over the Taliban’s newly introduced criminal regulation, warning that it further entrenches discrimination against women and ethnic communities across Afghanistan.
The regulation, known as the “Criminal Procedure Regulation of the Courts,” lays out punishments and sentencing for a range of vague and overly broad offences. It criminalises domestic violence only in cases where a woman has suffered a broken bone or visible injuries and prescribes a three-month prison sentence for women who regularly visit family members without their husband’s permission and refuse a court order to return home. The decree also introduces harsh punishments for religious non-compliance, imposes more severe penalties on people of lower social status, recognises slavery, and authorises punishments including the destruction of property, corporal punishment amounting to torture or ill-treatment, and the death penalty for a wider range of offences.
ACAA supports the concerns raised by Amnesty International. Smriti Singh, Amnesty International’s South Asia Director, warned that “the regulation makes an already repressive legal system even more draconian.”The measures come amid a continuing pattern of policies that severely limit the rights and freedoms of women and deepen the repression of Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic communities.
ACAA notes that women from non-Pashtun communities are particularly vulnerable under these policies, facing compounded discrimination both because of their gender and their ethnic background. Communities including Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and others have long experienced exclusion and systemic discrimination, and recent Taliban policies intensify these injustices.
ACAA also stresses that the commonly used term “minority groups” does not accurately reflect Afghanistan’s social reality and ethnic make-up. Afghanistan is a country made up of many ethnic communities, and no single ethnic group forms a clear majority of the population. In fact, when Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun “minority” communities are considered together, they represent a majority proportion of the country’s population. ACAA warns that framing these communities as “minorities” risks obscuring the broader patterns of political and cultural exclusion they face.
In addition to the new criminal regulation, ACAA highlights broader policies that are contributing to the repression of Afghanistan’s diverse communities. These include the increasing marginalisation of languages widely spoken by many Afghans, such as Farsi (Dari), in official and government signage and public communication. ACAA has also raised concerns about practices that reinforce unequal power structures, including reports of senior Taliban figures marrying multiple women from certain ethnic communities. Such practices, particularly when taking place in a context where women have little autonomy or legal protection, raise serious concerns about coercion and demographic manipulation that could threaten the survival and cultural identity of vulnerable communities.
ACAA has also received troubling reports from women inside Afghanistan that single women from certain ethnic communities are being arbitrarily detained by Taliban authorities without formal charges. According to these reports, women are coerced or forcibly taken into custody and compelled to go to Taliban-controlled prisons, where they are held for several days, sometimes up to a week, without any legal justification or criminal accusation before being released.
There are also deeply disturbing allegations that while detained, some women are subjected to sexual violence and are threatened and warned not to speak about what has happened to them. ACAA has received reports that some women become pregnant as a result of sexual abuse during detention, carried out without their consent. In some cases, Taliban authorities reportedly film and photograph women while they are imprisoned, including recording acts of abuse and coercion and forcing women to remove their clothing. Before being released, women are threatened that if they speak publicly about the abuse they have suffered, the footage and images recorded during their detention will be released and shared within their communities.
Many women feel unable to report these abuses due to fear, stigma and shame, and are forced to live in perpetual fear. In deeply conservative social contexts, even the knowledge within a community that a woman has been detained alone for several days without a male guardian, can severely damage her honour and dignity. As a result, victims face profound psychological trauma and social isolation, while perpetrators remain unaccountable.
Darius Nasimi, Head of Funding and Partnerships at the Afghanistan & Central Asian Association (ACAA), said:
“We agree with Amnesty International that this new criminal regulation represents a dangerous escalation in the Taliban’s repression of Afghan society. Not only does it further restrict the rights and freedoms of women, it also disproportionately impacts women from Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic communities who are already among the most vulnerable. Reports of arbitrary detention, abuse, intimidation and humiliation of women, combined with policies that marginalise languages such as Farsi and reinforce unequal power structures, demonstrate a wider pattern of repression and fear.”
Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed sweeping restrictions on women and girls, including bans on secondary and higher education, limitations on employment, and strict controls over movement and participation in public life. ACAA warns that the new regulation further strengthens mechanisms of control and punishment within an already restrictive legal framework.
ACAA is calling on the international community to take stronger and coordinated action to address the worsening human rights situation in Afghanistan. The Charity urges governments, international institutions and human rights bodies to increase diplomatic pressure on the Taliban to respect fundamental human rights, ensure that violations against women and ethnic communities are documented and investigated, and expand support for Afghan civil society and humanitarian organisations working to protect vulnerable communities.
ACAA also calls for the international community to ensure that the rights of women and Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic communities remain central to all international engagement and policy discussions related to the country’s future.
