Chris Fitzgerald

Opinion | Will suing the Taliban protect Afghan women? Maybe with China’s help

Taking legal action over gender discrimination in Afghanistan may have limited impact, but Beijing has influence it can use to bring change

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Burqa-clad women walk with a girl along a street in Fayzabad district, Badakhshan province in Afghanistan on September 22. Photo: AFP

Chris Fitzgerald

Published: 5:30am, 1 Oct 2024

Pressure is mounting on the Taliban to respect the rights of women after Western governments decided to take the group to the International Court of Justice for gender discrimination.

The Netherlands, Canada, Germany and Australia announced the move on Wednesday at the United Nations General Assembly, marking only the second time a country is sent to the International Court of Justice for violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination of Women (CEDAW).

Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp said the situation was “heartbreaking” while Australian foreign minister Penny Wong said the four countries would “hold the Taliban to account” for its treatment of women in Afghanistan.

Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban has treated women and girls abysmally. According to the UN, 2.5 million school-age girls have been denied their right to education while women have been banned from working for aid organisations and UN agencies.

The Taliban has also rolled out “vice and virtue” laws prohibiting women from speaking or showing their faces in public, and forbidding them to look directly at strange men or catch taxis without a male escort. This comes after the Taliban banned beauty parlours, a transparently cruel move designed to remove women from public spaces.

Women also face a culture of extreme violence. In March, the Taliban declared that stoning as a punishment would return to Afghanistan; in August, a woman in Balkh province was reportedly sentenced to death by stoning. The Centre of Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project reveals more than 300 reported cases of women being killed by men since the Taliban seized power, saying this is the “tip of the iceberg”.