ISLAMABAD: Australia has unveiled a new autonomous sanctions regime targeting senior Taliban figures over widespread restrictions on women and girls, as a United Nations expert warns that gender-based repression and public executions in Afghanistan are intensifying.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong described the mechanism as a “world-first” framework that will allow Australia to impose its own financial sanctions and travel bans to “increase pressure on the Taliban,” whose sweeping restrictions on women and girls have intensified since the group returned to power in August 2021.
Since then, the Taliban have barred women from secondary and higher education, restricted their movement and employment, and dismantled institutions designed to safeguard their rights.
Wong said listed individuals under the new regime will face asset freezes, financial penalties and travel bans. She stressed that humanitarian assistance would continue, noting that Australia has provided more than $260 million in aid since the fall of Kabul.
The move comes against the backdrop of escalating international concern. In July, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani and Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, for “crimes against humanity for the persecution of women and girls.”
The court said the Taliban had deprived women of basic rights, including education, family life, privacy and freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion.
Since the withdrawal of US and NATO forces in 2021, the Taliban have imposed sweeping curbs on women, banning them from most jobs and further restricting education.
In December 2022, female students were suspended from universities indefinitely. According to UN estimates, about 1.4 million girls, nearly 80% of school-age girls, are now out of school.
Wong said Australia remained “deeply concerned” about the deteriorating situation and emphasized that the sanctions framework contains a humanitarian exemption to ensure aid delivery.
Additional alarm was raised this week by Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, who concluded a five-day mission to Qatar on Dec 4.
He said his visit coincided with the global “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence,” adding: “Nowhere is this campaign more relevant than in Afghanistan, where, under Taliban rule, women and girls are being deprived of their fundamental rights, largely excluded from education and employment, restricted in their ability to access healthcare, and denied access to justice and protection.”
Bennett said he was “particularly alarmed” by reports of “gross violence against women and girls,” including the unexplained death of a recently married girl in Kabul.
“Such cases must be promptly and independently investigated,” he said, calling for “global solidarity and sustained pressure” to support Afghan women’s demands for “equality, safety and dignity.”
During his mission, Bennett said he also learned that the de facto Supreme Court had announced, and the Taliban leader confirmed, the public execution of a man convicted of murder in the city of Khost.
“On Dec 2, tens of thousands of local community members, reportedly including young boys, attended the public execution,” he said. A young male relative of the victim, “reported to have been a child,” carried out the killing.
“The death penalty is a cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and is especially concerning in circumstances where it is highly unlikely that the convicted person received a fair trial,” Bennett said. “Children must never be used to carry out an execution.”
