“A cat has more freedom in Afghanistan than a woman. She can sit on her front porch and feel the sun on her face or chase a squirrel in a park. That squirrel also has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today, because the Taliban have closed public parks to women and girls. A bird can sing in Kabul, but a girl cannot.” Actress Meryl Streep summed up on Tuesday, at an event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, the persecution, the deprivation of rights, the “cage” – the term used by many Afghan women – in which women are imprisoned under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Streep thus summed up a cry to which the international community has so far turned a deaf ear, in the more than three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021. The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands announced on Wednesday at the same United Nations forum that, if the situation of Afghan women does not improve within six months, they will initiate a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague against the Taliban for gender discrimination.
The situation of Afghan women and girls is heartbreaking. They are almost entirely excluded from public life. We cannot accept this. That’s why the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and Australia are holding Afghanistan accountable for violations of the Women’s Convention #CEDAW. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/UCsBny8GL8
— Caspar Veldkamp (@ministerBZ) September 25, 2024
If the announcement is made, this would be the first initiative by states to take the Afghan fundamentalists to an international court. Never before has a state taken another to the ICJ for gender discrimination. This suit before the judges in The Hague would be brought because the Taliban have violated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted by the United Nations in 1979 and ratified by Afghanistan in 2003, before the Afghan fundamentalists regained power.
This announcement falls short of the demands of Afghan women, human rights NGOs and women from around the world. First, because the case is postponed for six months, a period in which the situation of Afghan women should hypothetically improve. Also because Afghan women want the Taliban to answer for a crime much more serious than violating a UN convention. Women in Afghanistan are demanding that another international body, also based in The Hague – the International Criminal Court – try the Taliban for crimes against humanity due to gender persecution. In Spain, a group of women has started collecting signatures for the government to take precisely this initiative.
Once the case announced by these four countries is accepted, the Taliban would have six months to respond before a hearing is held and the judges decide whether to propose provisional measures. Such a response is highly unlikely. The fundamentalist regime does not recognise any international judicial body. As soon as they overthrew the government of President Ashraf Ghani, who enjoyed Western support, the Taliban annulled the country’s constitution, approved in 2004, in the first years of the twenty years that international troops were present in the country.
A “cage”
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The plundering of Afghan women’s rights began in September 2021 with the ban on women from many professions and the closure of secondary schools, leaving girls without education from the age of 12. The Taliban then expelled women from universities, banned them from parks and public toilets, closed their businesses, banned them from leaving home without the supervision of a male guardian and from working in NGOs and UN agencies. Afghan women are not even allowed to look out of their windows.
Between June 2023 and March 2024 alone, the Afghan regime passed 52 regulations against the rights of women and girls, describes a report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett. The rapporteur considers the situation of Afghan women to be a “apartheid “gender”. Afghanistan has reinstated public flogging and stoning of women for adultery and in August banned the sound of Afghan women’s voices and the visibility of their faces in public spaces.
Meanwhile, in early July, the United Nations held its third summit on Afghanistan in the Qatari capital of Doha, in which the Taliban participated, but Afghan women did not. Many Afghan women and women’s and human rights organisations interpreted this as a step towards normalisation with fundamentalists.
Proponents of the supranational justice route believe that a ruling by an international court would have a deterrent effect on those states that are considering recognising the Taliban, since those other countries would in theory be obliged to abide by the rulings of The Hague.
