On the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s adoption of the Criminal Procedure Code for Courts

B100251/2026

European Parliament resolution on the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s adoption of the Criminal Procedure Code for Courts

(2026/2737(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to Rule 150(5) of its Rules of Procedure,

whereas on 5 January 2026, the Taliban leader endorsed the “Criminal Procedure Regulation of the Courts”;

whereas since their return to power, the Taliban have imposed various restrictions on women, including “vice and virtue” regulations, education bans, dress-code decrees, travel, mobility and employment restrictions, and restrictions on public participation; whereas these measures amount to a systematic exclusion of women and girls from public life, justified by the Taliban’s own interpretation of Islamic law, jurisprudence and traditional Afghan social norms;

whereas the European Court of Justice ruled on 4 October 2024 that gender and nationality suffice to grant Afghan women asylum;

whereas the European Commission started “exploratory contacts” with the Taliban in 2025, following a call from 19 EU Member States and Norway to coordinate a strategy for returning Afghan nationals; whereas the Commission now plans to invite representatives of the Taliban for talks on returns of Afghans;

Deplores the situation of women in girls in Afghanistan; deplores that the Taliban have denied girls post-primary education, banned women from numerous public places and restricted their employment to healthcare and primary education; considers that these very restrictive norms have a very negative economic and social impact and deliberately push women and girls into dependence and poverty;

Notes that the criminal procedure code is applied in a system without independent courts and characterised by the absence of due process, the reliance on uncodified jurisprudence and the lack of institutional checks on interpretation or enforcement;

Notes that the primary function of the criminal procedure code is to regulate the application of discretionary punishment (ta’zir), and that the code expands judicial discretion in areas such as women’s mobility, family disputes or interpersonal conduct;

Notes that different elements of the code such as the differentiated application of discretionary punishment based on the condition or status of the offender, reflect long-standing doctrines within classical Hanafi jurisprudence, predating the Taliban by centuries;

Calls on the EU to change its strategy and to find pathways to incentivise the Taliban to introduce reforms, leading to an improvement of girls and women’s rights and their access to education;

Calls on the EU to engage with the Taliban, and to elaborate diplomatic and technical solutions for structured returns of Afghans;

Is concerned about the ECJ’s judgment of 4 October 2024; considers that this judgment will create an additional “pull effect” and lead to unequal access to protection, as a certain group of people can be granted an automatic preference in obtaining asylum; strongly rejects the fact that the EU’s highest court of law determines and changes asylum law in order to promote its views on social justice;

Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the European External Action Service, and the governments and parliaments of the Member States.