The 14th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is devoted to the condition of women and girls in Afghanistan.On 26 May 2023, the NGO Amnesty International published jointly with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) a report urging the International Criminal Court to qualify the abuses committed by the Taliban as a “crime against humanity” based on gender and sexuality, under article 7 of the Court's Rome Statute.
"While the backlash against women's and girls' rights has unfolded in different countries and regions in recent years, nowhere else in the world has there been an attack as widespread, systematic and all-encompassing on the rights of women and girls as in Afghanistan. Every aspect of their lives is being restricted under the guise of morality and through the instrumentalization of religion."*
Since the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021, the regime has grown stronger, establishing since November 2022 a rigorous application of Sharia law and silencing women, girls, as well as LGBTQIA + minorities.** Deprived of their fundamental rights, they are subjected to systematic discrimination - exclusion from school after primary school, from political and public life - and prevented from moving around, working and choosing their clothing. They are regularly arrested, tortured, threatened with death and imprisoned. The violence and discrimination perpetrated by the Taliban have been widely documented since the end of the 1990s and violate the human rights recognized in numerous international treaties, to which Afghanistan is a signatory.