Five years after the Taliban’s re-establishment of power, human rights activists in Afghanistan have documented thousands of incidents of public flogging. An analysis by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), which operates from exile, reports that between February 22, 2022, and April 21, 2026, a minimum of 2,745 people were flogged in 634 documented events.
According to the assessment, victims included 422 women, 1,761 men, and 562 individuals whose gender could not be recorded. AHRDO noted that 1,073 people were documented as victims in 2025 alone, while 535 victims had been recorded in this year up to April 21, 2026. The organization cautioned, however, that data from the initial years may be incomplete, thereby restricting the ability to draw definitive comparisons.
Public beatings were documented across all 34 provinces. Of the 422 women documented as victims, nearly 95 percent-399 women-were flogged for an alleged sexual or moral offense. The majority of documented incidents (66.6 percent) pertained to alleged sexual or moral violations. Violent crimes, such as murder, rape, kidnapping, or assault, accounted for 4.4 percent of the documented cases.
