Report: Afghanistan ranks second worst globally in rule of law

Washington — Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Dari article.

Afghanistan continues to face profound rule-of-law challenges under the Taliban’s rule, according to the independent nonprofit World Justice Project.

Afghanistan ranked 142nd out of 143 countries in the WJP’s 2026 Rule of Law Index, published in October, just ahead of Venezuela, while Denmark, Norway and Finland occupied the top three positions.

After coming to power in 2021, the Taliban suspended the Afghan constitution and dismantled much of the country’s existing legal framework.

Taliban officials initially said they would temporarily adopt the Afghan constitution of 1964 and remove the provisions they opposed; however, after five years in power, the Taliban have yet to adopt the1964 constitution or establish a new constitution.

Instead, the Islamist group governs by directives, decrees and regulations that it claims are based on its interpretation of Sharia. This has raised serious concerns among legal experts about constitutional governance, judicial independence, and the rule of law.

Mohammad Amin Zia Badakhsh, a former Afghan judge, told VOA that the Taliban suspended the constitution as they entered Kabul and, since then, have had no framework to define what the Taliban's leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, can and cannot do.

A constitution he says is necessary because it, "establishes the legal obligations and powers of a leader [in a political system],” said Badakhsh.

The Taliban leader has issued hundreds of decrees, including those restricting the rights and freedoms of women in the country.

In August 2024, the group imposed the “Law of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,” restricting personal freedoms and religious practices and covering aspects of everyday life such as transportation, music, shaving, celebrations, and women’s behavior and appearance in public.

Badakhsh said that in the Taliban’s governance, there is no check on the group’s power and no accountability.

“The public has no role [in their politics], nor do they consider the legitimacy derived from the public,” he added. “Therefore, there are no constraints on their power."

Constraints on government power, both constitutional and institutional, are one of the eight factors in the WJP’s Rule of Law Index. The other factors used to rank countries on the index are absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.

Bashir Mobasher, the president of the Afghanistan Law and Political Science Association in exile and a postdoctoral fellow at the American University, told VOA the Taliban’s worldview of governance is not compatible with the rule of law system.

“It is because the rule of law takes shape and meaning in the form of civil government, while the Taliban are seeking to establish a totalitarian government ... based on the fact that they want to apply a divine law based on their extreme interpretation of the [Sharia] law.”

He added that the Taliban’s worldview of governance is not compatible with the rule of law system.

“Therefore, if we want the rule of law [in Afghanistan], the Taliban must relinquish power,” said Mobasher.