“What is happening to women in Afghanistan does not happen anywhere in the world, and is being normalized and forgotten.” With these words, Shaharzad Akbar, president of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan and director of the, underlines the importance of the special session of which from Wednesday and until Friday will be held in Madrid to denounce the persecution of gender against Afghan women. For three days, survivors, activists and international jurists will present evidence and testimonies before a panel of experts from this international opinion court, created in 1979 to address serious human rights violations ignored by the States.
“This court is historical because it constitutes a unique opportunity to collectively listen to the voices of the women of Afghanistan,” says Dorothy Estrada Tank, a member of the UN working group about discrimination against women and girls. According to the expert, although the verdict, which will be known in December, is not binding, “will allow to document and analyze the testimonies, and thereby open the door for accountability because women and girls continue to face every day in that country.”
This court is historical because it constitutes a unique opportunity to collectively listen to the voices of the women of Afghanistá
Dorothy Estrada Tank, member of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls
From the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, women. The new Afghan government, led by the Taliban,. They also face severe mobility limitations, since they can only travel accompanied by a man, and have even been publicly silenced, with public spaces or that their faces are seen in the streets.
“While the dignity and rights of women are restricted every day, at the same time the Taliban have been recognized by countries such as Russia or even by Germany, which has agreed with them to deport Afghan,” explains Akbar in a conversation by phone.
“Real situations”
The Permanent Court of the Peoples, based in Rome, is an initiative of civil society created in 1979 as heiress of the Russell court, which in the sixties denounced war crimes in Vietnam and Latin American dictatorships. He has no judiciary or issuing binding sentences, but an internationally recognized moral and symbolic authority. “Your verdict can be taken to the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council and before the European Union,” says Akbar, who believes that much of the mobilization work will begin once the sentence is made public. Although the great objective, according to the activist, is “to know the real situations that the women of Afghanistan are living.”
“We will have testimonies of protesters, activists or teachers who have been arrested and tortured and whose families have been threatened,” describes Akbar, who points out “the enormous courage” of the people who are going to declare. “During the days when it occurred, we were completely incommunicado with witnesses inside the country, but we had a survivor who traveled for an hour and a half to the border with another country and bought a SIM card from that country to connect to the Internet,” recalls the activist. “When he succeeded, said ‘I must testify, I want my testimony to be heard in this court,” recalls Akbar.
We will have testimonies of protesters, activists or teachers who have been arrested and tortured and whose families have been threatened
Shaharzad Akbar, Directora de la onong rawadari
The process that now arrives in Madrid is the result of a year of work of a coalition of four Afghan organizations: Rawadari, Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (Ahrdo), Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (Drops) and Human Rights Defenders Plus (HRD+). It also has the collaboration of the Human Rights Observatory (ICAM), whose headquarters will be held. Four Afghan prosecutors specialized in international justice and gender violence have prepared the accusation document that will be examined during the sessions.
“We have shared this accusation with the Taliban so that they have the opportunity to come and defend themselves, but so far they have not responded,” explains Rawadari’s director. For her, one of the keys to trial will be “the testimony of a Muslim scholar of Indonesia who will talk about how Taliban’s policies are not in line with Islam.” “It is what the Taliban most hate, because they always say that international law does not care, because it is, according to them, an imposition of the West, but they are very careful in saying that everything they do is Islamic.”
“With the Court, our global conscience about Afghanistan is awakened and revived, and also on the crucial relevance of reaffirming and defending gender equality throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a cornerstone of our international system of norms and values,” concludes Estrada Tank.
