The Taliban government in Afghanistan has published a decree regulating divorce that the United Nations and human rights organizations say effectively legalizes child marriage, a charge the regime flatly denies even as its own spokesman offered a medically disputed defense of the policy.
At issue is Article 5 of the decree, which addresses the dissolution of marriages contracted on behalf of girls before they reach puberty. The provision states that "upon reaching puberty, the minor has the option to dissolve the marriage" that a relative may have arranged for her. In plain language, the Taliban's new legal framework presumes that a girl can be married off before puberty, and only gains the right to object once her body matures.
The decree amounts to the first formal legal architecture for child marriage under Taliban rule. It drew swift condemnation from the United Nations and from human rights groups who say it strips away protections that existed even under Afghanistan's previous governments, governments that were hardly models of women's liberation themselves.
The Taliban rejected the criticism. Officials claimed the government has saved thousands of women and girls from forced marriages since seizing power in 2021. No evidence for that claim has been made public.
Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban's spokesman, told The New York Times in a series of voice messages that most Afghan women reached puberty between the ages of 15 and 18. That assertion runs headlong into established medical science. The U.S. National Institute for Health places the general onset of puberty between ages 8 and 13, meaning the decree could apply to girls far younger than the Taliban publicly acknowledges.
The gap between Mujahid's claim and the NIH's data is not a minor quibble. It is the hinge on which the entire policy turns. If puberty can begin as early as age 8, then a girl married at 7 could be deemed eligible to "choose" whether to stay in that marriage just a year later. The decree does not set a minimum age for the initial marriage. It sets a biological trigger, puberty, for the child's first opportunity to leave.
Fereshta Abbasi, the Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, noted that child marriage existed under previous Afghan governments as well, but with limits. Prior law permitted marriage "but only between the ages of 15 and 16" and required parental permission. The Taliban decree removes even that floor.
The distinction matters. Afghanistan's former legal framework, flawed as it was, at least attempted to set a minimum age. The Taliban's new decree replaces a numerical threshold with a biological one, handing the question of when a girl is old enough to marry, or old enough to refuse, to the unpredictable timing of physical development.
Since retaking Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban has imposed some of the world's most severe restrictions on women and girls. Schools for girls beyond the sixth grade remain closed. Women have been barred from most workplaces, parks, and gyms. The divorce decree fits a pattern: each new regulation tightens the vise on Afghan women while the regime insists it is acting in their interest.
The full text of the decree has not been made widely available in English, but the operative provisions reported so far are telling. The decree regulates divorce and defines the conditions under which girls married before puberty may seek separation. Article 5 provides the only exit: once the girl reaches puberty, she may dissolve the marriage.
What the decree does not do is equally important. It does not prohibit the marriage of prepubescent girls. It does not require the girl's consent before the marriage takes place. It does not impose penalties on relatives who arrange such unions. And it does not specify what happens if a girl reaches puberty and lacks the resources, knowledge, or family support to exercise her supposed right to leave.
In a country where literacy rates for women remain among the lowest in the world, and where the Taliban has systematically dismantled women's access to education and legal services, the "option to dissolve" may exist only on paper. The decree creates a legal right that the regime's own policies make nearly impossible to exercise.
The consequences of policies that strip legal protections from vulnerable family members, whether in Kabul or closer to home, can be devastating in ways that defy prediction.
The regime's claim to have rescued thousands of women and girls from forced marriages deserves scrutiny. No supporting data, case records, or independent verification accompanied the assertion. The Taliban has not permitted independent human rights monitors to operate freely in Afghanistan. International journalists face severe restrictions. The claim, in short, cannot be checked, which is precisely how the Taliban prefers it.
Mujahid's voice-message defense to the Times, that Afghan women reach puberty later than medical science indicates, follows a familiar pattern. The regime makes a factual claim that serves its policy goals, offers no evidence, and relies on the world's limited access to Afghanistan to avoid contradiction on the ground.
The United Nations condemned the decree, though the specific office or official who issued the condemnation was not identified in available reporting. Human Rights Watch, through Abbasi, provided the most detailed public critique. Other human rights organizations joined the condemnation, but their specific identities were not detailed.
Afghanistan has largely fallen from the headlines since the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. The Taliban's consolidation of power has proceeded with little sustained international attention. Decrees like this one, technical-sounding, buried in the language of family law, are easy to overlook. They shouldn't be.
What the Taliban has done is build a legal framework that treats girls as property to be transferred by male relatives, with the only safeguard being a biological event the girl cannot control and a legal right the regime's own policies make almost impossible to use. The decree does not merely tolerate child marriage. It regulates it, giving it the force of law and the veneer of process.
The international community's response will reveal whether condemnation amounts to anything more than press releases. The Taliban has shown no inclination to reverse course based on foreign criticism alone. And with no diplomatic leverage, no military presence, and limited humanitarian access, the West's options are narrow.
But naming the thing clearly is a start. This is not a divorce regulation. It is a child marriage statute dressed in procedural language. And the regime that wrote it is the same one that claims to have saved thousands of girls from exactly the fate it just codified.
When a government writes a law governing how to end a child's marriage, it has already conceded that children are being married. Everything else is just paperwork.
