Child marriage has long been a problem in Afghanistan. A 2021 UNICEF report estimated that 28% of Afghan women aged 15–49 years were married before the age of 18.
A new decree issued by the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice will add to the numbers, say researchers and activists who follow this issue.
The focus of the law is divorce procedures but it contains several clauses that recognize child marriages.
“This is one of the most worrying legal developments in Afghanistan under the Taliban,” says Roqia Saee, one of the founders of the Afghan Women’s History Transformation Movement, a group that fights for women’s rights that started up in 2022.
A lack of precision about age
According to Article 5 of this new law, the guardian of a child is fully within their right to arrange a marriage for a minor and such a contract would be considered legal.
The law addresses the age of a child bride in a way that’s sparked additional outrage, says Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghan human rights lawyer and a researcher at the Human Rights Watch. Article 7 of the new law allows the silence of a virgin girl who has reached puberty to be considered as consent to marriage.
“This was the case even in the previous law; the silence of a woman has always been interpreted as consent. But previously, marriage was allowed between the ages of 15 and 16 with parents’ consent,” Abbasi says. “Now there is no minimum age.”
The decree specifies that the child can seek annulment through a court order but only after reaching puberty. The definition of puberty, however, was not specified.
The law has attracted strong criticism from within and outside Afghanistan, with women’s groups and legal scholars equivocally terming it as “dangerous.” The U.N.’s Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) referred to the decree as “another step in the erosion of Afghan women and girls’ rights.”
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