Silence upon reaching puberty can be interpreted as consent to marry.
Taliban's new family law decree allows marriage of girls who reached puberty, treating silence as legal consent to matrimony arranged by relatives. The regulation strips fundamental rights from Afghan girls, denying education, employment, and freedom of movement while 80% of women are expelled from labor market.
- Taliban Decree 18 permits marriage of girls who have reached puberty, treating silence as legal consent
- 80 percent of Afghan women have been expelled from the labor market
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child condemned the decree on June 1, 2026
- As of May 14, 2026, the regulation made it legal for an adult man to rape a girl in Afghanistan
- Girls are prohibited from secondary and higher education under Taliban rule
UN Committee on Child Rights condemns Taliban decree 18 permitting child marriage in Afghanistan, warning it treats girls' silence as consent and exposes millions to violence, exploitation, and forced pregnancy.
On Monday, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a formal condemnation of a Taliban decree that had been in effect for more than a week—a regulation that fundamentally rewrites the legal status of girls in Afghanistan by permitting child marriage and, more troublingly, treating a girl's silence as legal consent to matrimony.
The decree, known as Decree 18 on family law and formally titled "Principles of Spousal Separation," was approved by the Taliban's de facto authorities and permits marriages involving minors when arranged by relatives other than the father or grandfather. The regulation distinguishes between girls who have reached puberty and those who have not, using puberty itself as a marker to "legitimize" marriages of the former group. The document runs to 31 articles and meticulously governs the conditions under which marriages can be dissolved, annulled, or forcibly separated in Afghanistan.
The UN committee's statement was unsparing. The 18 independent experts on child rights emphasized that child marriage—defined as any union where at least one party is under 18—constitutes a harmful practice and a form of forced marriage, since children inherently lack the capacity to give full, free, and informed consent. The committee called the treatment of puberty as a threshold for legal marriage capacity "entirely incompatible" with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989. Most damning was the decree's provision that a girl's silence upon reaching puberty can be interpreted as consent to marry. The committee expressed profound concern not only about this specific regulation but about a broader pattern of discriminatory measures against Afghan girls, including the prohibition on secondary and higher education.
The human toll is staggering. The committee warned that this decree has deprived millions of Afghan girls of their fundamental rights, weakened their future economic and social participation, and deepened poverty and inequality across the country. Girls face heightened risks of violence, exploitation, forced and early pregnancy, interrupted education, and long-term physical and psychological damage. UNICEF has documented that Afghanistan's severe economic crisis is pushing families into deeper poverty, forcing them to make desperate choices—putting children to work and marrying off girls at young ages. With most adolescent girls still barred from returning to school, the risk of child marriage has only intensified. Education, UNICEF notes, is typically the strongest protection against harmful coping mechanisms like child marriage and child labor.
The decree arrives within a landscape of systematic erasure. According to UN Women, 80 percent of Afghan women have been expelled from the labor market. Women are now prohibited from working in banks, NGOs, UN humanitarian agencies, and cannot serve as prosecutors, judges, or parliamentarians. Those few who retain employment must be accompanied by a male relative to and from work; women who venture onto streets without a male "guardian" risk imprisonment and torture. They are barred from parks, gardens, gyms, public baths, restaurants, and cafes. They cannot play sports or drive.
As of May 14, the regulation made it legal for an adult man to rape a girl in Afghanistan. The decree's logic—that silence constitutes consent—effectively legalizes sexual abuse within marriage. International human rights organizations have raised alarm that the Taliban is increasingly codifying radical interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence into state law, systematically institutionalizing gender-based restrictions through the legal system. The committee has demanded that the Taliban immediately repeal all measures that violate children's rights, including child marriage, warning that any legal framework normalizing or facilitating unions with minors violates their rights, undermines their inherent dignity, and strips them of autonomy and future opportunity.
Citas Notables
Child marriage constitutes a harmful practice and a form of forced marriage, since children inherently lack the capacity to give full, free, and informed consent.— UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Education is typically the strongest protection against harmful coping mechanisms like child marriage and child labor.— UNICEF
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does the UN committee specifically object to treating silence as consent?
Because silence is not consent—it's the absence of refusal. A girl who says nothing has not agreed to anything. The decree weaponizes passivity, turning a child's inability to resist into legal permission for an adult to marry her.
Is this decree new, or has child marriage always been practiced in Afghanistan?
The Taliban legalized it formally in this decree. Before, there were protections on the books. This is a deliberate reversal—codifying into law what was previously illegal, making it institutional rather than hidden.
What does UNICEF mean when it says education is the best protection?
Girls in school have a future outside marriage. They have skills, independence, income potential. Once married young, that door closes. Education gives them a reason to stay unmarried and the tools to resist if pressure comes.
Why would families marry off their daughters if they could afford not to?
Poverty. When you cannot feed your children, marrying off a daughter means one fewer mouth to feed and sometimes a bride price coming in. The Taliban's economic collapse has made this calculation brutal for millions of families.
Is the Taliban interpreting Islamic law, or inventing it?
They're selecting interpretations that maximize male control. Islamic jurisprudence is vast and contested. They're choosing the most restrictive readings and embedding them in state law so there's no escape—no appeal to custom, no flexibility, no mercy.
What happens to a girl who refuses to marry under this decree?
The law says her silence is consent, so refusal becomes irrelevant. If she speaks, she's defying her family and the state. Either way, she has no legal protection. The system has closed off every exit.