The Taliban’s supreme leader issued a two-point decree approving new criminal procedural regulations for the courts. It consists of 119 articles across three chapters and ten sections. The regulations legitimize violence against women by husbands and society under the guise of preventing vice, slavery, and speak of enslaved and free, and establish a four-tier class system that grants religious scholars and elites immunity from certain offenses while imposing harsher punishments on those considered middle and lower class.

Taliban officials informed women government employees – who had been ordered to stay home while remaining formally employed and paid – that their monthly salaries would be discontinued, effectively cutting off their income.

Taliban’s supreme leader issued a decree enforcing a new family law, Principles for the Separation of Spouses, which governs marriage, separation, and divorce. The law limits Afghan women’s ability to seek divorce, excludes many forms of abuse, and places a heavy burden of proof on women, making it far more difficult for them to obtain legal remedies.