The Taliban’s systematic use of Afghanistan’s legal and judicial system to target women and girls amounts to “crimes against humanity,” a United Nations human rights expert said in a report circulated Wednesday.

Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, told the General Assembly that the Taliban have “weaponized” the law to suppress women since retaking power in 2021. The expert reported that the current government has dismantled key legal protections, dismissed hundreds of judges—including approximately 270 women—and installed men aligned with their hardline ideology, many of whom lack formal legal training.

“ Today, there are no women judges or prosecutors and no officially registered female lawyers, leaving women and girls with fewe

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