THE International Criminal Court (ICC) should prosecute Taliban leaders for denying education and employment to Afghan girls and women, UN special envoy for global education Gordon Brown said.

The former British prime minister told a virtual UN press conference on the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on Tuesday that its rulers are responsible for “the most egregious, vicious and indefensible violation of women’s rights and girls’ rights in the world today.”

Mr Brown, who as Chancellor was pivotal to the West's invasion of the country in 2001, said that he has sent a legal opinion to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan that shows the denial of education and employment is “gender discrimination, which should count as a crime against humanity, and it should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.”

The Taliban retook power in August 2021, during the final weeks of the US and Nato forces’ retreat after 20 years of war.

As they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban gradually reimposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, barring girls from school beyond the sixth grade and women from most jobs, public spaces, gyms and recently closing beauty salons.

Mr Brown urged major Muslim countries to send a delegation of clerics to Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar, the home of Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, to make the case that bans on women’s education and employment have “no basis in the Koran or the Islamic religion” and to lift them.