The Taliban's oppression of Afghanistan's women is going to be challenged in the International Court of Justice. The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands announced at the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday that they plan to pursue a gender discrimination case against Afghanistan's government in the world court, the Guardian reports.
- In 2003, long before the Taliban returned to power, Afghanistan ratified the UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Taliban's extremely blatant violations of the convention in recent years have included banning women from higher education and most forms of employment. In an edict last month, women were banned from showing their faces or raising their voices in public.
- The case could make it harder for other countries to normalize relations with Afghanistan while abuses of women continue, the Guardian reports. Advocates have expressed concerns that women's issues have not been on the agenda in UN talks with the Taliban government.
- Earlier this year, Heather Barr at Human Rights Watch said the ICJ "offers governments that have expressed their solidarity with Afghan women another practical way to put Taliban abuses under judicial scrutiny." "Afghan women and girls deserve their day in court against the Taliban, and the ICJ could play an important role," she wrote.
- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a side meeting at the UNGA that the Taliban's treatment of women is comparable to "some of the most egregious systems of oppression in recent history," Voice of America reports.
- While they're not being treated anywhere near as harshly as women, men in Afghanistan are also facing new restrictions under last month's edicts. They are required to grow beards and are banned from looking at women they are not married or related to. Some say they wish they had spoken up about the restrictions on women, the Washington Post reports. "If men had raised their voices, we might also be in a different situation now," a male Kabul resident tells the Post. "Now, everyone is growing a beard because we don't want to be questioned, humiliated."
("A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan," Meryl Streep said in a
speech at the UN on Monday.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
