How States Should Respond To The Atrocities Against The Hazara?

On September 4, 2025, New Lines Institute, a non-governmental organization, launched its newest report looking into the situation of the Hazara community in the Taliban-run Afghanistan. The report makes a legal assessment of acts targeting the community, examining the most recent attacks and the ongoing dire situation, since the Taliban takeover in August 2021. The report considers whether the ongoing attacks against Hazaras, carried out by various actors including the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP/Daesh) and the Taliban, constitute genocide as per Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention).

The report comes three years after British Parliamentarians established that there was a serious risk of genocide against the Hazara in Afghanistan. Back in 2022, having conducted an in-depth inquiry and having taken testimonies from victims/survivors and experts, British Parliamentarians found that the Hazara in Afghanistan, as a religious and ethnic minority, were at serious risk of genocide at the hands of the Taliban and IS-KP. This finding was supposed to have engaged the responsibility of all States to protect the Hazara and prevent a possible genocide, in line with the duty to prevent genocide in Article I of the Genocide Convention, and as per customary international law. However, these responses did not follow, enabling the Taliban to continue and do so with impunity.

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, it significantly affected the situation faced by the Hazara and reversed the 20-year progress made in addressing the marginalization and discrimination experienced by this minority group. The return to power of the Taliban has included brutal acts of violence against the Hazara throughout Afghanistan and a return to terror. The first half of 2022 has seen hundreds of members of the Hazara community killed and many more injured as a result of the targeted attacks, including bombings of Hazara schools, places of worship and other centers. As the New Lines Institute report shows, this trend continued over the last three years.

The new report reveals a reasonable basis to believe that the targeting of the Hazara in the past few years, for which the Taliban and IS-KP/Daesh have predominantly claimed responsibility, meets the legal criteria for the crime of genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention, with attacks on the Hazara amounting to prohibited acts under Article II (a) (killing members of the group), Article II (b) (causing serious bodily or mental harm), and Article II (c) (inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction). It further engaged with evidence of the specific intent required to prove the crime, namely, intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part.

The report cites a litany of examples of the targeting of the community, including attacks on schools, hospitals, places of worship, public transportation, workplaces, weddings and other celebrations, peaceful protests, commemoration ceremonies, sports and recreational events, markets, cultural centers, and voter registration sites, among others. In relation to the specific intent to destroy, Lord Alton of Liverpool, Peer in the U.K. House of Lords and chair of the Hazara Inquiry, indicated: “The intent to destroy the Hazara community, in whole or in part, is starkly evidenced by the perpetrators’ explicit acknowledgment of responsibility, dehumanizing rhetoric, incitement to violence, and repeated attacks on cultural and religious symbols. These acts, rooted in a long history of persecution dating to the late 19th century, reflect a chilling continuity of violence against this vulnerable group.”

What now? What if the atrocities amount to genocide? As the report explains, the crimes against the Hazara require “legal responses towards justice and accountability, including individual criminal responsibility of those responsible, but also state responsibility, and responsibility of the de facto authorities of Afghanistan.” Ambassador Beth Van Schaack, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (2022-2025), added that: “Given that the de facto authorities of Afghanistan are involved in the violation of the Genocide Convention, other State parties must act upon the duties under the Genocide Convention – to protect and ‘employ all means reasonably available to them’ to protect Hazaras from further genocidal acts in Afghanistan and to punish – by ensuring justice and accountability.” Among others, States could institute proceedings before the International Court of Justice against the Taliban, as the de facto authorities, for their violations of the Genocide Convention. This recommendation was presented by British Parliamentarians back in 2022. Over the last three years, there have been no attempts to do so. The question is then – what else would need to happen for States to care more?