A new penal code issued by decree in Afghanistan prescribes harsher penalties for animal mistreatment than for domestic violence and enshrines legal inequality based on gender and social status.
Decree No. 12, signed in January by Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, comprises 119 articles across a 60-page document. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that the decree “defines several crimes and punishments that contravene Afghanistan’s international legal obligations” and urged Afghan authorities to rescind it.
The code allows husbands and heads of households to determine and mete out punishment at home and “provides for the use of corporal punishment for numerous offences, including in the home, legitimising violence against women and children,” Türk said. It also criminalises criticism of the de facto leadership and their policies, violating freedoms of expression and assembly.
Under the decree, a man who beats his wife badly enough to cause a visible cut, wound or bruise faces 15 days in prison if his wife can prove the case before a judge. By contrast, a woman who goes to her father’s house and stays without her husband’s permission is punished with three months in prison; her relatives face prison if they do not return her to her husband.
UN Women’s Special Representative in Afghanistan, Susan Ferguson, said the decree “formally removes equality between men and women before the law,” placing husbands above their wives and restricting women’s access to protection and justice.
Penalties for animal cruelty are stiffer. Anyone organizing animal or bird fights faces five months in prison. Cockfights and partridge fights—popular pastimes that were banned after the Taliban took power in 2021—are specifically targeted.
The code also institutes class-based differential punishments for the same offences: scholars and “high-ranking people” receive warnings; tribal leaders and businessmen get warnings and court summonses; “average people” face imprisonment; and the “lower classes” may be physically beaten. An offender sentenced to up to 39 lashes must be whipped on “different parts of the body,” the decree states.
Murder carries the death penalty for anyone convicted. Insulting the Prophet Muhammad is also a capital offence, though the death penalty can be reduced to six years’ imprisonment if the accused repents.
Speaking in Geneva, Türk urged Afghan authorities to reverse their exclusionary policies. “Women and girls are the present and the future, and the country cannot thrive without them,” he said.
