Summary Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Afghanistan, and others who do not conform to rigid gender norms, have faced an increasingly desperate situation and grave threats to their safety and lives since the Taliban took full control of the country on August 15, 2021. 2 Human Rights Watch and OutRight Action International interviewed 60 LGBT Afghans from October to December 2021. Most of those interviewed were in Afghanistan, while others had fled to nearby countries where they remain in danger, including of being forcibly returned. Just a few have resettled in countries where they feel safe. Many of those interviewed reported being attacked, sexually assaulted, or directly threatened by members of the Taliban because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Others reported abuse from family members, neighbors, and romantic partners who now support the Taliban or believed they had to take action against LGBT people close to them to ensure their own safety. Some fled their homes from attacks by Taliban members or supporters pursuing them. Others watched as lives they had carefully built over the years disappeared overnight and found themselves at risk of being targeted at any time because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Afghanistan was a dangerous place for LGBT people well before the Taliban recaptured Kabul in 2021. In 2018, the government of President Ashraf Ghani passed a law that explicitly criminalized same-sex sexual relations, and the previous penal code included vague language widely interpreted as making same-sex relations a criminal offense. 3 LGBT people interviewed had experienced many abuses because of their sexual orientation or gender identity prior to the Taliban’s return to power, including sexual violence, child and forced marriage, physical violence from their families and others, expulsion from schools,
2 Throughout this report, the term “LGBT” is intended to be inclusive of people of a range of identities, including those who
identify as queer, non-binary, or gender nonconforming or who otherwise fall outside a cisgender, heterosexual norm.
3 Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch Country Profiles: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 2021 (New York:
Human Rights Watch, 2021), Afghanistan, https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2021/04/23/country-profilessexual-orientation-and-gender-identity#afghanistan. Under both the penal code adopted by the Afghan government in 2017 and the country’s previous penal code, sex outside of marriage is a crime and is punishable by death, when the high standard under Islamic law of multiple eyewitnesses is met, and by imprisonment under the lower evidentiary standard of criminal courts.
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JANUARY 2022
