Today, OFAC designated Fariduddin Mahmood (Mahmood) and Khalid Hanafi (Hanafi) for serious human rights abuse related to the repression of women and girls, including through the restriction of access to secondary education for women and girls in Afghanistan solely on the basis of gender. This gender-based restriction reflects severe and pervasive discrimination against women and girls and interferes with their enjoyment of equal protection.
Since August 2021, the Taliban has implemented expansive policies of targeted discrimination against women and girls that impede their enjoyment of a wide range of rights, including those related to education, employment, peaceful assembly, and movement, among others. Afghanistan is the only nation in the world where women and girls are prohibited from pursuing secondary education.
Throughout Afghanistan, the Taliban’s policies banning access to education for women and girls have been met with strong opposition from both women and men, including activists advocating for girls’ access to education. The Taliban response to this opposition has been severe, including disrupting protests, beating protesters, banning assemblies, and detaining and assaulting journalists covering the demonstrations.
Mahmood is a member of the Taliban’s so-called “cabinet” that made decisions to close education centers and schools to women and girls after the sixth grade. He serves as the so-called “head of the Afghanistan Academy of Sciences” and supported the education-related bans on women and girls. He is being designated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13818, which builds upon and implements the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and targets perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world, for being a foreign person who is responsible for or complicit in, or has directly or indirectly engaged in, serious human rights abuse involving the restriction of access to all secondary education for women and girls in Afghanistan solely on the basis of gender, which interferes with their enjoyment of equal protection.
On December 23, 2016, the President signed the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Pub. L. 114-328, Title XII, Subtitle F) (the “Act”) into law. The Act authorized the President to impose targeted sanctions on any foreign person the President determines is, among other things, responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, or a government official, or a senior associate of such an official, responsible for, or complicit in, ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, acts of significant corruption.
On December 20, 2017, the President, invoking the authority of, inter alia, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) (IEEPA), issued Executive Order 13818 (82 FR 60839, December 26, 2017) (E.O. 13818), effective at 12:01 a.m. eastern standard time on December 21, 2017.
In E.O. 13818, the President determined that serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States and declared a national emergency to deal with that threat.
OFAC is issuing the Global Magnitsky Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR part 583 (the “Regulations”), to implement the Act and E.O. 13818, pursuant to authorities delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury in E.O. 13818. A copy of E.O. 13818 appears in appendix A to this part.
