Context: The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for two senior Taliban leaders for the crime of persecuting women, girls, and others who oppose the gender policy of the government.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Rome Statute, Facts about ICC.
ICC issues Arrest Warrant against Taliban Leaders
- Warrant issued against: Two senior Taliban leaders- Supreme leader Hibatullah Akhunzada and the head of Afghanistan's Supreme Court- Abdul Hakim Haqqani.
- Ground: On charges of systematic persecution of women and girls.
- Legal Basis- Afghanistan’s ICC Membership: ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed on Afghan soil or by Afghan nationals after Afghanistan acceded to the Rome Statute in 2003.
Systematic Persecution of Women and Girls in Afghanistan:
- Taliban has severely deprived girls and women of:
- basic human rights like education, privacy, and family life
- freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience, and religion.
- E.g., barring girls from secondary schools, beauty salons, excluding women from most workplaces, and restricting their movement without a male guardian.
- 144-page Morality Law (2024) promulgated by the Taliban includes provisions requiring women to cover their entire body in public, and to not sing or even speak in public. It forbids women and men from looking at each other in public, and provides for the persecution of LGBTQIA+ people.
What is the International Criminal Court?
ICC’s law on Crimes Against Humanity:
Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as :
- Crimes against humanity include persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender… or other grounds universally recognised as impermissible under international law, carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.
Impact of the ICC's Warrant:
- The warrants mark the first time the global court has taken legal action directly against the Taliban leadership for gender-based persecution.
- However ICC’s warrant is unlikely to result in any arrest, as Taliban rejects ICC jurisdiction, rendering the warrant unenforceable in Afghanistan.