Australia sanctions Afghan Taliban officials over women’s rights abuses

Canberra said the Taliban officials are blameworthy of oppressing women and girls, arsenic good arsenic ‘undermining bully governance’.

The Australian authorities has imposed fiscal sanctions and question bans connected 4 officials successful Afghanistan’s Taliban government, citing the deteriorating quality rights concern successful the country, peculiarly for women and girls.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said successful a connection connected Saturday that Canberra had established a “world-first” autonomous sanctions model for Afghanistan, which would let it to “directly enforce its ain sanctions and question bans to summation unit connected the Taliban”.

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The caller model besides introduces an arms embargo, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said, arsenic good arsenic prohibitions connected “providing related services and activities to Afghanistan”.

The section named the sanctioned Taliban officials arsenic Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice Muhammad Khalid Hanafi; Minister of Higher Education Neda Mohammad Nadeem; Minister of Justice Abdul-Hakim Sharei; and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani.

The Australian Government has established a world-first autonomous sanctions model for Afghanistan, arsenic portion of our ongoing efforts to clasp the Taliban to account.

In effect from today, we person besides announced the archetypal listings nether the caller framework.

— Senator Penny Wong (@SenatorWong) December 5, 2025

Wong said the officials had been sanctioned owed to their engagement “in the oppression of women and girls and successful undermining bully governance oregon the regularisation of law”.

“This includes restricting entree to education, employment, state of question and the quality to enactment successful nationalist life,” she said.

Canberra said its caller model “builds on” the 140 individuals and entities it already sanctions arsenic portion of the United Nations Security Council’s Taliban framework.

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities is yet to publically respond to Canberra’s latest measures.

In July, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an apprehension warrant for Chief Justice Haqqani, alongside the Taliban’s ultimate leader, Haibatullah Akhunzada, for alleged crimes against humanity for persecuting women and girls.

Announcing the sanctions, the ICC said the Taliban has “severely deprived” girls and women of the rights to education, privacy, household beingness and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion.

Since returning to powerfulness pursuing the withdrawal of United States and NATO troops – of which Australia was a portion – from Afghanistan successful August 2021, the Taliban has enacted terrible restrictions connected the rights and freedoms of women and girls, including the close to enactment and study.

The Taliban has rejected accusations of violating women’s rights, claiming they are respected “within the model of Islamic law”.

In December 2022, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Higher Education banned pistillate students from the country’s universities until further notice, successful a determination wide condemned by the planetary community.

Last year, the UN said the Taliban authorities had “deliberately deprived” astatine slightest 1.4 cardinal girls of their close to an acquisition during its clip successful power, wholly astir 80 percent of school-age girls.

Afghans person besides been plunged further into poverty since the Taliban takeover, fuelled successful portion by the prohibition connected pistillate information successful the workplace, with immense swaths of the country’s colonisation present heavy reliant connected humanitarian assistance to survive.

In her statement, Wong said the Australian authorities “remains profoundly acrophobic astatine the deteriorating situation” successful the country, continuing that a “humanitarian permit” had been carved retired successful the caller sanctions framework, allowing the continued proviso of aid.

“Our thoughts are with those suffering nether the Taliban’s oppression, arsenic good arsenic the Afghan assemblage successful Australia,” she said.