Taliban decree on divorce implicitly legalizes child marriage in Afghanistan, UN warns

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has issued a new decree on divorce that the United Nations and human rights organizations say implicitly legalizes child marriage while further eroding women's legal protections. The regulation, which governs the conditions under which people can dissolve marriages, has drawn international condemnation for what it reveals about how the Taliban regime treats girls and women in the country it has controlled since 2021.

The decree's most contentious provision concerns girls married before puberty. Article 5 states that upon reaching puberty, a minor girl has the option to dissolve a marriage that a relative may have arranged on her behalf. The U.S. National Institutes of Health defines puberty as occurring between ages 8 and 13, though Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told the New York Times that most Afghan women reach this stage between 15 and 18. Under previous Afghan governments, child marriage was technically legal but only between ages 15 and 16 and with parental permission. Before the Taliban's return to power, roughly one in three Afghan girls married before turning 18, according to UNICEF. That rate has climbed in recent years, driven by economic collapse, women's restricted access to courts, and the Taliban's ban on secondary and higher education for girls.

What makes the decree particularly troubling to UN officials and researchers is how it handles consent. If a girl does not object to an arranged marriage upon reaching puberty, her silence is treated as agreement to the union. Adult women and boys, by contrast, must give explicit verbal consent. The UN mission in Afghanistan stated in a response that by devoting an entire section to how girls who reach puberty can exit marriages, the decree implicitly acknowledges that child marriage is permitted. It also allows a girl's silence to be interpreted as consent—a standard not applied to anyone else.

For adult women seeking divorce, the path remains deliberately obstructed. While the decree theoretically permits women to seek separation if a husband abuses them, the process requires mediation, family involvement, and the husband's consent. Men retain the unilateral right to divorce their wives. Fereshta Abbasi, an Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, noted that in practice it is nearly impossible for a child to navigate divorce proceedings. "How would a girl who has been married to an abusive husband for four or five years dare to go to court?" she asked. "How would she have the means to get there, or even know she could?"

The Taliban spokesman defended the decree by citing Islamic law and claiming the government protects women's rights. Mujahid said no girl should be forced into marriage and that she must be able to make her own choice and give her own approval. He acknowledged, however, that marriages of pre-pubescent girls arranged by fathers or grandfathers are "still considered valid" under current practice—a situation the new decree addresses. On the question of silence as consent, Mujahid argued that a marriage proposal might make a shy girl uncomfortable, so her silence should be read as acceptance.

The decree arrives as the Taliban has systematically dismantled women's freedoms across Afghan society. Girls are barred from school after sixth grade. Women are prohibited from most professions and public spaces, must remain silent in public, and often cannot leave home without a male escort. A new penal code issued this year stipulates that a husband who "seriously assaults" his wife faces only 15 days in prison, compared to six months for injuring someone in general. According to the UN, Afghan women are four times less likely than men to seek justice, partly because female lawyers have been excluded from courts and women-focused legal services have been dismantled.

Human rights groups describe the divorce decree as another layer of institutionalized discrimination. UN Women stated last year that the exclusion of women from Afghan society is treated as normal or inevitable—a foundational pillar of Taliban governance. The Taliban claims to have saved thousands of girls and women from forced marriage, yet the new decree's language suggests the opposite: by regulating how girls can exit marriages entered before puberty, it normalizes those marriages as a legal category. For millions of Afghan girls, the decree represents not progress but the formalization of a system designed to keep them bound.