On July 31, 2025, a coalition of civil society organizations announced the launch of the People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan, an initiative to address the impunity for the dire situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan will be part of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), an international opinion tribunal competent to rule on any serious crime committed to the detriment of peoples and minorities. The Tribunal is to add to the existing pathways to hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes and demand justice, raise the alarm about the normalization of the Taliban’s oppression of women and give women and girls their chance to be heard around the world.
The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan is a civil society response to the dire situation of women and girls since the Taliban took over the country in August 2021. Ever since taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban have been placing restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives. From education to employment. From movement to participation in everyday activities. When the international community thought that it could not get any worse for women in Afghanistan, the Taliban kept coming up with new ways to impose more restrictions on women. In August 2024, the Taliban published its law to “promote virtue and eliminate vice”, which sets up rules for everyday life and adds to the litany of restrictions on women. Article 13 of the law made it mandatory for a woman to veil her body at all times in public. A face covering was said to be essential. This was to avoid temptation and tempting others. Women are to cover themselves in front of non-Muslim males and females. By virtue of the law, a woman’s voice is deemed intimate, and as such, women are not to be heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public. Women are not allowed to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and vice versa.
Domestically, Afghan women have no avenues for legal redress. As stressed in a recent report from Richard Bennett, UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, “For women and girls – already stripped of their fundamental human rights – the Taliban-controlled justice system does not just restrict their access to justice and protection, it serves as a tool which allows for the further institutionalization – in law, policy, and practice – of the groups’ system of gender-based discrimination and domination.” Internationally, on the other hand, Afghan women have been leading several important efforts to challenge the Taliban’s institutionalized restrictions of women’s rights. Afghan women have been leading the efforts to recognize their treatment in Afghanistan as gender apartheid (and also to have it codified as an international crime). Afghan women have been working 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 in existence. The ICC has already issued arrest warrants against two Taliban leathers. Afghan women have also been working with States pushing for the legal challenge of Afghanistan before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan will open its doors in October 2025. Four Afghan prosecutors, each with expertise in international criminal justice and gender-based violence, are currently preparing an indictment to be presented to the tribunal in early October. They are supported by a dedicated evidence team responsible for gathering documentation, as well as an international expert team. The hearings will be presided over by an international panel of judges, whose composition will be decided by the Permanent People’s Tribunal and announced in the coming weeks.
The Tribunal will not have powers to indict and issue arrest warrants. However, it will provide Afghan women and girls a platform to share their testimonies, as well as include expert testimonies from civil society, jurists, and global human rights specialists. The Tribunal will review evidence of gender persecution as a crime under international law, demonstrating how the severe oppression of Afghan women and girls defies both Islamic teachings and international obligations. The initial statement from the judges is expected on October 10th, with the final verdict in the first half of December 2025.
As women and girls are denied their voices in Afghanistan, initiatives that magnify their voices globally must gain the support of the international community as a whole. As it stands, when it comes to women’s rights, Afghanistan is a country without a parallel in the modern world. However, we also should know by now, that ideologies which drive this treatment of women and girls can spread and will spread if unaddressed in Afghanistan.