29 January 2025

The Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) welcomes the announcement made by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 23 January 2025 concerning the filing of applications for warrants of arrest before the Pre-Trial Chamber II in the Situation in Afghanistan. The arrest warrant applications were filed against two senior Taliban leaders – Taliban Supreme Leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the Taliban Chief Justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, asserting reasonable grounds to believe that the alleged perpetrators bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on the basis of gender grounds. 

These arrest warrant applications are the first to be submitted in the Situation in Afghanistan and represent a significant step in ensuring accountability for those responsible for the unprecedented and unconscionable persecution of girls, women and the LGBTQI+ community of Afghanistan, including the deprivation of their fundamental right to physical integrity and autonomy, freedom of movement, expression, education, private and family life, and free assembly. 

The international crimes committed in Afghanistan are broad and must be effectively investigated to end ongoing impunity. In this regard, the ACIJ welcomes the Prosecutor’s indication that further arrest warrant applications will soon be sought for other senior members of the Taliban. 

We call on the Prosecutor to intensify efforts to investigate all international crimes committed over the past two decades in Afghanistan, ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable for the gross injustices suffered by all victims. This includes the ongoing, systematic and widespread attacks targeting ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Hazara and Shia communities of Afghanistan. These minority communities have been subjected to ongoing and systemic human rights violations including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and other ill-treatment, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and targeted mass killings, violations which together constitute crimes against humanity, in particular, the crimes of murder, extermination, imprisonment, torture, persecution and enforced disappearance.

The ACIJ further calls upon the Prosecutor to reverse his troubling decision to “deprioritise” investigations into crimes allegedly perpetrated by US military forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) within Afghanistan, as well as in CIA ‘black sites’ located not only in Afghanistan but also on the territory of other States Parties of the ICC, including Poland, Romania and Lithuania. Selective approaches to international justice ultimately undermine the rule of law, which serves to ensure equality before the law, accountability to the law and fairness in the application of the law. 

The ACIJ remains committed to the international campaign led by Afghan and Iranian women to recognise gender apartheid as a crime against humanity and commends the support shown by the Australian Government for this campaign. The ACIJ also commends the Australian Government for their intervention at the International Court of Justice in the action brought against Afghanistan for violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, of which Afghanistan is a party. This action has been brought about as part of the wider effort to hold the Taliban regime to account under international law for their grave mistreatment of Afghan women and girls. 

Executive Director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, Ms Rawan Arraf said:

“These arrest warrants are a result of decades of work by victim-survivors and human rights groups in Afghanistan who have struggled for truth, accountability, redress and justice for the millions of people in Afghanistan, a country that has endured over four decades of war. Women and girls have long paid the ultimate price for crimes committed in Afghanistan, and continue to pay the ultimate price under the Taliban regime.

“As the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) focuses on the crimes of the Taliban regime, closer to home, Australian authorities are continuing to investigate allegations of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. We commend those efforts but are concerned by recent announcements from the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) that it has decided not to pursue a number of incidents for prosecution. We’ve called on the OSI to provide more detailed reasons to the affected Afghan families and communities and the Australian public explaining the decisions not to pursue prosecutions in those cases.

“The Office of the Prosecutor will visit Australia in the coming months and meet with the OSI. We call on the OTP to impress upon Australian authorities and the OSI the urgent need to conduct victim outreach and ensure there are avenues for meaningful victim participation in the criminal justice process that has been established here in Australia.

“Finally, the Australian Government has lagged in its provision of prompt compensation and redress to the affected families and communities, some 12 years after the incidents occurred, and four years after the Brereton Inquiry recommended compensation be immediately provided. The compensation scheme that was finally established late last year must expand in scope and address its serious shortcomings, including the lack of consultation with affected Afghan communities, and Afghan human rights groups and experts.”

The ACIJ acknowledges the work of its partner organisation, the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO). We endorse their statement released on 23 January 2025.

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For media enquiries contact Rawan Arraf on +61(0)450 708 870.

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