On Thursday, the United Nations raised sharp, grave alarm over a newly enacted family law from Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban government, warning that the legislation’s provisions on underage marriage further cement systemic discrimination against the country’s women and girls. The Taliban administration has rejected the international body’s criticism, framing the new regulatory decree as fully aligned with Islamic law and noting that it already enforces a nationwide ban on forced child marriage.
Last week, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Justice formally published Decree No. 18, officially titled “on judicial separation of spouses”, which lays out new formal regulations for marital separation between married couples. In an official statement, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) flagged that one of the decree’s most contentious provisions explicitly allows a girl’s silence once she reaches puberty to be interpreted as legal consent to marriage. The mission added that the document’s framing of marital separation for girls who are married after reaching puberty implicitly codifies permission for child marriage, directly undermining the core principle of free, full and informed consent to marriage and failing to protect the best interests of minor children.
The new law does outline narrow circumstances under which a child marriage arranged by a father or paternal grandfather can be ruled invalid: if the marriage was arranged without a dowry, with an insufficient dowry, or involved corrupt misappropriation of funds. It also grants a minor girl married off by her father or grandfather the right to petition a court to void her marriage contract after reaching puberty, if her husband has failed to treat her with kindness or is known for harmful conduct. However, the legislation introduces steep procedural inequalities for women seeking divorce: if a woman requests a divorce that her husband denies, and she has no witnesses to support her claim, her husband’s testimony will be treated as legally valid. The only exception to this rule is if the woman submits her divorce request directly before a judge.
Long before this new decree was introduced, women and girls across Afghanistan already endured sweeping, systemic discrimination enforced by Taliban law. Taliban regulations impose strict mandatory dress codes, restrict acceptable public behavior, bar girls and women from secondary education, university attendance, most formal employment, and nearly all public leisure activities ranging from gyms and beauty salons to public city parks.
Georgette Gagnon, UN Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of UNAMA, emphasized that Decree No. 18 is part of a broader deeply worrying trend of incremental erosion of women and girls’ rights across Afghanistan. While the decree does formally create pathways for women to pursue marital separation, it creates a drastically unequal playing field: men retain an automatic unilateral right to divorce, while women are forced to navigate a complex, restrictive judicial process to end a marriage. UNAMA’s statement noted that this unequal framework reinforces structural gender discrimination and severely limits women’s autonomy over matters that are fundamental to their dignity, personal safety, and overall well-being.
When the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-backed NATO forces, the administration initially announced a small set of nominal limited rights for women, including a decree that acknowledged women’s right to inheritance and the right to refuse unwanted marriage. UNAMA pointed out that successive regulatory decrees from the Taliban have steadily undermined these limited protections over time. The cumulative effect of the dozens of restrictions imposed by the Taliban has left millions of Afghan women and girls stripped of their right to education, weakened women’s economic participation, and deepened widespread poverty across the country, impacts UNAMA says will carry long-term consequences for Afghanistan’s overall national development.
Speaking in an interview with Afghanistan’s state-owned RTA broadcaster, Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed international criticism, arguing that objections to the decree from what he called “those who contradict the religion of Islam” are not a new development and do not deserve attention. Mujahid reaffirmed that Afghan Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has already issued a separate standing decree banning forced child marriage, adding that Afghan courts and the Ministry of Vice and Virtue have investigated thousands of suspected forced marriage cases over the past year alone, which he claims demonstrates the Islamic Emirate’s commitment to protecting women’s rights.