People’s Tribunal to consider a serious situation of women in Afghanistan

On July 31, 2025, a coalition of civil society organizations announced the launch of the People’s Tribunal for Women or Afghanistan, an initiative to tackle the impunity for the terrible situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. The People’s Tribunal for Women or Afghanistan will be part of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT)An international opinion tribunal that is authorized to focus on a serious crime that is committed to people and minorities. The tribunal is to add to the existing paths to keep the Taliban responsible for their crimes and to demand rights, to raise an alarm about the normalization of the oppression of the Taliban of women and women and girls to give their chance to be heard all over the world.

The People’s Tribunal for Women or Afghanistan is a reaction to civil society to the terrible situation of women and girls since the Taliban took over the country in August 2021. Since the acquisition of Afghanistan, the Taliban has imposed restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives. From education to employment. From movement to participation in daily activities. When the international community thought it couldn’t get worse for women in Afghanistan, the Taliban continued to come up with new ways to impose more limitations on women. In August 2024, the Taliban published his law to “promote and eliminate vice”, which sets up and contributes rules for daily life to the litany of limitations on women. Article 13 of the law made it obliged for a woman to perpetuate her body in public at all times. It was said that a facial cladding was essential. This was to prevent temptation and to seduce others. Women must cover themselves for non-Muslim men and women. Based on the law, the voice of a woman is considered intimate, and as such women are not allowed to be heard, recite or read aloud in public. Women are not allowed to look at men that they are not related to by blood or marriage, and vice versa.

In their own country, Afghan women have no roads for legal story. As stressed in a recent report by Richard Bennett, a special rapporteur on Afghanistan”For women and girls stripped of their fundamental human rights, the Taliban-controlled legal system not only their access to justice and protection, it serves as a tool that makes further institutionalization possible-in legislation, policy and practice of the system of gender-based discrimination and dominance.” Internationally, Afghan women have made various important efforts to challenge the institutionalized limitations of the Taliban of women’s rights. Afghan women have made the efforts to recognize their treatment in Afghanistan as gender apartiness (and also codified as an international crime). Afghan women have worked with the International Criminal Court (ICC) And states to ensure that the treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan is considered by the only permanent court that exists. The ICC has already issued arrest statements against two Taliban Leathers. Afghan women have also worked with states that insist on Afghanistan’s legal challenge before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) For the violations of the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination of women (CEDAW)

The People’s Tribunal for Women or Afghanistan will open its doors in October 2025. Four Afghan public prosecutors, each with expertise in international criminal law and gender -based violence, are currently preparing an indictment for the early October presented to the tribunal. They are supported by a dedicated evidence team that is responsible for collecting documentation, as well as an international expert team. The hearings will be chaired by an international panel of judges, whose composition will be determined by the permanent people’s tribunal and announced in the coming weeks.

The tribunal will have no powers to accuse and implement arrest statements. However, it will offer Afghan women and girls a platform to share their testimonies, and comprises expert testimonies of civil society, lawyers and global human rights specialists. The tribunal will revise evidence of genderVoing as a crime under international law, which shows how the serious oppression of Afghan women and girls defies both Islamic teachings and international obligations. The first statement from the judges is expected on October 10, with the final judgment in the first half of December 2025.

Because women and girls are denied their voices in Afghanistan, initiatives that increase their voices worldwide must receive the support of the international community as a whole. As it looks now, when it comes to women’s rights, Afghanistan is a country without a parallel in the modern world. However, we must now also know that ideologies that stimulate this treatment of women and girls can spread and spread if they are not addressed in Afghanistan.