Horror as Taliban pass sick law so girls as young as 9 can get married

The Taliban have legalised child marriage and passed a law enabling the silence of a “virgin girl” who has reached puberty to be interpreted as marital consent. The militant Islamist group removed the minimum marriage age for girls in Afghanistan by linking eligibility to puberty, according to an official document titled Principles of Separation Between Spouses.

The legal marriage age in the Central Asian country was previously 18 for boys and 16 for girls, with the new law effectively lowering the latter to just nine-years-old. Marriage of girls younger than 15 was also criminalised in the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law.

Horia Mosadiq, director of the Conflict Analysis Network, told The Times: “Under the new law, that age limit is removed. If a girl reaches puberty at the age of nine or ten, she is considered of a legal age to marry.”

Kabul fell to the Taliban five years ago after Western troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.

The militant group has imposed an extreme interpretation of Sharia Law in the intervening period, including severe repression of women’s rights and economic isolation.

Mr Mosadiq said the new law effectively legalises child rape, describing it as “another level of atrocity that the Taliban are inflicting on women since they came to power”.

Shaharzad Akbar, executive director of Afghan rights organisation Rawadari, added: “The law … essentially acknowledges that marriages of minors happen.

“If they happen, the girl can get out of it, but only by going to a Taliban court, and only under certain conditions.”

Such conditions include when guardians are proven to be abusive, morally corrupt or mentally unfit. Marriages cannot be invalidated on the basis of non-compatibility, however.

A United Nations report in 2024 found that restrictions on women’s rights, requiring them to cover their entire bodies and whisper when in public, had fuelled an increase in the practice of child and forced marriage by up to 25%.

The treatment of women in the Taliban-run country has been labelled as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court, with arrest warrants issued for two senior regime figures.