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Taliban security personnel stand guard as an Afghan burqa-clad woman walks along a street in the Baharak district of Badakhshan province, 26 February 2024 (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)
Is the International Court of Justice a toothless tiger, or can a new legal battle truly turn the tide for women and girls?
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The declining fortunes of Afghanistan’s womenThe declining fortunes of Afghanistan’s women
More than three years after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the rights of women and girls have plummeted in the country. While the international community has watched the dire situation unfold with a sense of powerlessness, women have been banned from attending school, talking in public, and even singing.
As actress Meryl Streep put it at an event at the United Nations in September:
Today in Kabul, a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law.
In recent years, high-profile Afghan women have fought fiercely to keep the issue on top of the agenda, but the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East inevitably took the spotlight. While the subject is a recurring topic of discussion at UN Headquarters and other venues, few concrete steps have been taken to help Afghan women. Many countries, especially Western ones, appear to have few pressure points on the de facto authority in the country, and direct intervention seems to be out of the question after the messy withdrawal of August 2021. As one diplomat told me, “What are we going to do, re-invade?”
That was until a few weeks ago. On 25 September in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting, Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands announced their intent to sue the Taliban at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its numerous violations of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The following day, 22 other countries including Morocco, South Korea and Malawi followed suit in a statement.
Actor and activist Meryl Streep talks to the press after attending the meeting on the Inclusion of Women in the Future of Afghanistan, at UN Headquarters in New York on 28 September 2024 (Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Afghanistan ratified CEDAW in 2003 without reservation, which means the ICJ has jurisdiction over the matter. Should the case move forward, it would be the first time a country faces charges for discrimination against women. Members who have agreed to the convention’s dispute mechanism can challenge other members over alleged breaches of CEDAW.
It's still unclear what impact such a case may have on the situation for women in Afghanistan. No government has, so far, officially recognised the Taliban as the legitimate representative of the people of Afghanistan. And many non-governmental organisations and observers are growing increasingly concerned that countries have not put women’s rights at the centre of talks with the Taliban in recent months. In June, a UN-led meeting on Afghanistan in Doha, Qatar, excluded women civil society representatives from the official talks.
As one UN observer said, the ICJ is usually “a place countries send issues when they want them to die”.
Human Rights Watch argued in May that bringing the issue before an international court could offer “a potential platform where the voices of Afghan women could echo, demanding justice and accountability”. While an ICJ decision would technically be legally binding for Afghanistan, the court has few enforcement mechanisms. Recent decisions and provisional measures issued by the ICJ, including on Russia–Ukraine and Israel–Palestine, were mostly ignored by member states.
Women and activists will have to be patient. The official grievance against the Taliban cannot be submitted immediately. The court's regulations require a formal announcement indicating that there is a disagreement, followed by a six-month timeframe during which the involved parties are expected to attempt to resolve their conflict. The ICJ is infamous for taking years to come to decisions. As one UN observer said, the ICJ is usually “a place countries send issues when they want them to die”.
So, Afghan women will have to hold their collective breath until March 2025 to see if the case progresses, and then wait even longer for the judicial process to take place. One of those women is Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan parliamentarian who currently lives in exile. She welcomed the initiative, but expressed the urgency to act when it comes to the fate of women in her country. She wrote in a post on X:
When I read these articles and hear what women in Afghanistan tell me about their living situation, I wonder how much and how long it will take for the world to start acting and make the international norms and institutions such as the ICC and the ICJ work before faith over the internationally accepted organisations further decline.
About the author
Stéphanie Fillion
Stéphanie Fillion is the editor-in-chief of Envoy, a magazine focused on the United Nations, diplomacy and global affairs.
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