Hibatullah Akhundzada

The accountability question around Hibatullah Akhundzada is unusually direct because his office sits above the ministries that implemented many of the Taliban's restrictions. The strongest case for attributing responsibility is not that he is symbolically associated with the regime, but that the record identifies decrees and policy direction flowing from the supreme leadership.

The ICC's 5 October 2026 disclosure gives that record a formal legal frame. Judges describe alleged persecution on gender grounds from 15 August 2021 to at least 20 January 2025 and connect it to severe deprivation of fundamental rights. The court also treats the policy as reaching people who did not conform to Taliban gender norms and people described as allies of girls and women. That is a wider allegation than an education-policy dispute.

The underlying restrictions are independently visible in the public record. Girls remained excluded from secondary schooling; women were suspended from university education; restrictions reached employment with NGOs and the UN; and the 2024 vice-and-virtue law formalized additional controls. Where Akhundzada issued or approved those measures as supreme leader, the causal record is stronger than a generic claim that every government action belongs personally to him.

The legal limits must remain explicit. An arrest warrant is not a conviction. The ICC says judges found reasonable grounds for the charged crime; Akhundzada has not appeared before the court and has not been tried. The Taliban rejects the court's authority.

Enforcement is the second limit. The ICC has no police force, and Akhundzada remains in a system controlled by the movement he leads. The warrant therefore changes legal exposure and travel risk more readily than it changes control inside Afghanistan. Russia's 2025 recognition of the Taliban government underscores that political recognition and criminal accountability can move on separate tracks.

The record should therefore be read in two layers: documented policy acts that can be attributed to the supreme leadership, and criminal allegations that remain to be tested in court. Keeping those layers separate preserves both accountability and due process.

What would accountability look like?

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Hibatullah Akhundzada in July 2025 over alleged persecution on gender grounds and unsealed the warrant on 5 October 2026. The charge is an allegation before the court, not a conviction. The warrant focuses attention on a policy system in which girls were excluded from secondary and university education and women were pushed out of major areas of employment and public life.

The evidence base extends beyond the ICC. UNAMA and other UN bodies have documented education bans, work restrictions, corporal punishments and the enforcement apparatus created by Taliban authorities. Akhundzada's strongest defence is the Taliban claim that these measures follow its interpretation of Islamic law. International bodies reject that justification as incompatible with Afghanistan's human-rights obligations and have repeatedly called for the restrictions to be reversed.

The enforcement gap is the central problem. The ICC has no police force and depends on states to execute warrants. Akhundzada remains inside a system that controls Afghan territory, while diplomatic engagement with the Taliban has not produced compliance with the court. Accountability therefore has two tracks: preserving evidence and legal findings for possible future arrest, and measuring current policy effects on education, work, punishment and personal liberty. A warrant can identify alleged criminal responsibility; it does not by itself reopen a school or release a person from discriminatory rules.

Public punishment returned under his Taliban leadership

Under Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban restored public corporal and capital punishment as an explicit instrument of rule. On 7 December 2022 the authorities carried out what was reported as the first public execution since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Al Jazeera (opens in a new tab) reported that the execution took place in Farah province in front of senior officials after Akhundzada had instructed judges to apply punishments under the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic law. The execution came amid a wider return of public floggings. On 16 December 2022, UN experts called for an immediate halt to public floggings and executions; the statement preserved by ecoi.net (opens in a new tab) described more than 100 people publicly flogged in several provinces since the Taliban takeover and warned that such punishments violate international prohibitions on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The sequence ties Akhundzada's supreme-leader authority to a visible restoration of punitive practices.

Restrictions on women became a governing system

The punitive turn was accompanied by successive restrictions on women's public life. In December 2022 the Taliban barred women from working for domestic and international NGOs; in April 2023 the restriction was extended to Afghan women employed by the United Nations. These measures followed the exclusion of girls from secondary education and the suspension of women's university education. The same governing direction was later codified in the 2024 vice-and-virtue law, which formalized controls over clothing, movement, public speech and interactions between unrelated men and women. The UN experts' December 2022 statement (opens in a new tab) already framed corporal punishment and broader rights restrictions as part of an accelerating erosion of legal protections after the Taliban takeover. Akhundzada's role is central because Taliban decrees and judicial directions are issued under a system in which the supreme leader is the ultimate religious and political authority. The record is therefore not a collection of isolated local practices: it is a series of nationwide policy decisions implemented under his leadership.