Taliban moral police launches “women’s rights” campaign

In October 2024, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MPVPV) began an apparent campaign online highlighting its efforts to protect women’s rights. Through its accounts on X (formerly Twitter, 145,000 followers) and YouTube (2,970 subscribers), the Ministry posted written updates, audio reports, and speeches on measures supposedly addressing issues ranging from domestic violence and forced marriage, to inheritance rights. In one post, MPVPV also claimed to have intervened in cases of rape.

The MPVPV YouTube account explicitly mentioned women’s rights for the first time on 13 August 2024, through a Pashto audio recording of a speech by Mawlawi Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, Minister for PVPV, regarding the Supreme Leader’s decree granting “rights and freedom” to women along Sharia principles (see below).

In the speech, Hanafi said that under the “corrupt” Republic government, women’s rights and human rights were merely promoted “on paper”, whereas the Islamic Emirate has ensured these in practice. Hanafi also said that under the Taliban, no one is allowed to marry a woman to compensate for a wrongdoing (for instance, to settle disputes ranging from debts to murder) or for a dowry, while criticising “foreigners with evil intentions” for wanting women to remove their hijabs.

Following this, the YouTube account began regularly sharing audio updates on women’s rights and promoting MPVPV interventions in “women’s rights cases”. Similarly, the MPVPV account on X explicitly mentioned women’s rights for the first time on 10 October 2024, sharing a written statement on the prevention of forced marriage and the decree on women’s rights.

On 7 November 2024, the MPVPV on X and YouTube posted an audio report in Pashto. The post, while admitting that women’s rights are violated in Afghan society, claimed that over the past three years, the Taliban prevented 5,000 forced marriages and ensured inheritance for some 20,000 women, which they had previously been denied due to “unacceptable old traditions”. In another X post, MPVPV appeared to associate these “traditions” with the Republic government and its international allies, stating, “(…) the traditions of the past 20 years have kept women away from their Sharia rights, such as the right to choose a spouse”.

In January 2025, the MPVPV X account reposted content from an English-language account called “Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” which has 252 followers and was created in December 2024. As of 21 January 2025, the account had shared 10 posts, with its first post focusing on measures taken by MPVPV to advance women’s rights. AW was unable to determine if the English-language account was an official account of the MPVPV.

Posting frequency on X and YouTube

Figure 1 below illustrates the increase in content mentioning women’s rights-related keywords shared by the MPVPV accounts on X and YouTube between 1 January 2024 and 21 January 2025. The vast majority of the content (72 of 75 instances) was shared after 1 October 2024.

The X account included women’s rights-related keywords 52 times in total, with most (50 of 52) shared after 1 October 2024. AW observed that before the posts became more frequent in October, the MPVPV account on X had shared only two posts related to women’s rights in March (one) and November (one). The increase in posts on women’s rights issues matched an overall spike in activity on the MPVPV account from October.

Meanwhile, MPVPV’s YouTube account shared 23 videos with relevant keywords. As on the X account, these updates increased from October 2024 with a further spike noted from December: October (four), November (three), December (seven), and January (seven, until 21 January). Only two mentions were recorded earlier: August (one) and September (one).

Thematic breakdown

In terms of themes covered, most content shared by MPVPV on X and YouTube from 1 January 2024 to 21 January 2025 focused on forced marriage (33 of 75 instances), followed by posts mentioning mixed women’s rights issues (22), domestic violence (19), and inheritance (1).

Out of the 33 posts on forced marriages, AW observed that four mentioned minors as victims, including two 12-year-old and two 13-year-old girls in Ghazni, Samangan, Zabul, and Kunduz. One of the posts also mentioned that an orphan had been “rescued”, but did not disclose her age. Two posts mentioned other “vulnerable” female survivors, including an 18-year-old girl and a widow.

Measures allegedly taken to protect women’s rights and intervention methods

Measures allegedly taken by MPVPV to protect women’s rights, per its YouTube and X posts, mostly consisted of “interventions” against forced marriages, domestic violence, and dowry/inheritance issues. MPVPV also encouraged people to submit complaints through a toll-free, 24-hour phone line.

Most posts did not detail how MPVPV had “resolved” cases, apart from stating that survivors were rescued. However, AW observed that some of the practices described raise concerns about the safety of those “rescued”. For instance, in November 2024, an audio post claimed that MPVPV officials in Ghazni province had returned a girl, who had fled home due to domestic violence, back to her family in Daikundi. MPVPV officials asked her family to “refrain from violence”, while the post claimed the measure was a “source of hope for the child victims of violence”, implying that the girl was a minor. The audio message was also shared in English.

Other posts describe how, in domestic violence cases, MPVPV officials limited themselves to extracting promises from abusers to refrain from such acts in the future, or calling both parties to “be fair” and “respect each other’s rights”. This echoes practice documented by other human rights actors, where MPVPV officials often offer “advice” first in interventions, before resorting to other judicial or punitive measures.

A push for gendered communication by the Taliban

AW assesses that there are several reasons behind the MPVPV’s surge in communications on women’s rights. In September 2024, Canada, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the Taliban’s violations of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This triggered a wave of responses from the Taliban authorities and their supporters, denying the allegations and highlighting women’s allegedly prominent roles under the Taliban system.

Similarly, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2024 confirmed that his investigation on Afghanistan focused on the rights of women and girls under the Taliban. On 22 January 2024, the Prosecutor requested arrest warrants against two senior Taliban officials for gender persecution.

MPVPV’s focus on forced marriages and domestic violence also appears to be a response to vocal criticism by the UN and other rights actors on how Taliban policies have fuelled such abuse. Similarly, the campaign could also be a reaction to domestic and international criticisms of the so-called PVPV Law published in August, which expanded and codified a range of restrictions on women’s rights, and continued allegations of Taliban members’ involvement in SGBV.