ICC Unseals Taliban Arrest Warrants for Gender Persecution

The International Criminal Court unsealed four Taliban Arrest Warrants on October 5, 2026, making public the sealed case files accusing senior Taliban leaders of the crime against humanity of gender persecution. The court's Pre-Trial Chamber II named the movement's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, alongside three of his most powerful officials, and laid out in newly public documents how the judges say Taliban policy systematically stripped women and girls of their fundamental rights.

The four Taliban Arrest Warrants target Akhundzada; Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the chief justice of the Taliban-run supreme court; Habibullah Agha, the education minister; and Neda Mohammad Nadim, the minister of higher education, according to the ICC's own account of the decision in its statement. The warrants against Akhundzada and Haqqani were issued on July 8, 2025, and their existence was disclosed at the time. The warrants against Agha and Nadim followed on September 9, 2025, and stayed entirely under seal until now.

What the Taliban Arrest Warrants Say

The judges found reasonable grounds to believe that all four men ordered, induced, or solicited persecution on gender grounds under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute, the court's founding treaty, according to the ICC. The chamber ruled that "gender" in the treaty goes beyond a purely biological reading of sex and covers socially constructed roles, behaviors, and hierarchies — a reading that lets the court treat the Taliban's decrees as gender persecution even when they are framed as religious or cultural rules. Taken together, the Taliban Arrest Warrants describe a campaign directed not only at women and girls but at anyone whose gender identity or expression did not conform to Taliban policy, as well as at people targeted on political grounds as "allies of girls and women."

The alleged crimes span from the Taliban's seizure of power on August 15, 2021, until at least January 20, 2025. The chamber found that Taliban decrees and edicts severely deprived women and girls of rights to education, privacy, and family life, and of freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience, and religion — in connection with conduct including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape, and enforced disappearance.

The road to the unsealing stretched over more than a year. Then-prosecutor Karim Khan announced in January 2025 that he had requested warrants for Akhundzada and Haqqani. The first two Taliban Arrest Warrants were issued on July 8, 2025, with their existence made public but their contents sealed. The warrants for the two education ministers were issued on September 9, 2025, in complete secrecy. In unsealing all four on October 5, 2026, the chamber said publication would not unduly harm ongoing investigations, could help prevent further crimes, and could encourage international cooperation in the Afghanistan situation.

What the Warrants Can — and Cannot — Do

The Taliban Arrest Warrants land in a pattern the court has used before against leaders who remain in power. In March 2023 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the deportation of Ukrainian children — warrants that have not led to an arrest but have sharply limited where he can travel safely. The court has no police force of its own and depends on its member states to detain suspects who enter their territory.

For the Taliban, that constraint may bite hardest in exactly the area the warrants concern: legitimacy abroad. Any foreign travel by the four men now carries the risk of detention in a member state, and on the same day the Taliban Arrest Warrants were unsealed, the UN Human Rights Council urged the Taliban authorities to repeal what it called the worsening, systematic oppression of all women and girls in Afghanistan. The unsealed documents give governments and rights groups a detailed legal record to cite when pressing Kabul on its treatment of women and girls.

The Taliban administration rejects the court's authority outright. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghanistan does not recognize the court or attach significance to its positions, adding that the country is bound by the rulings of Islamic Sharia, as reported by the Associated Press in its dispatch from The Hague. With the movement in control of the country and the court lacking any means to compel cooperation, the prospect of any arrest is remote — a reality the court's own statement implicitly acknowledges by framing the unsealing as a step toward cooperation and prevention rather than imminent custody.

Still, the unsealing matters for Afghans watching from inside and outside the country. For women and girls barred from school beyond the sixth grade, from most jobs, and from much of public life, the warrants are the first time an international court has formally accused the architects of those policies of crimes against humanity. Whether the Taliban Arrest Warrants ever reach a courtroom, they convert years of decrees and edicts into a named legal case — and make the officials who signed them internationally wanted men.

For more fast-moving global stories, follow The Feed. GenZ NewZ has also covered the court's strained relations with Washington — read US Sanctions Force ICC Assembly Move to The Hague.