PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL: the session on the women of Afghanistan to fight the crime of silence

Translated by Francesca Valsecchi

Justice is an eminently social virtue which consists in the willingness to recognise and respect other people’s rights, giving everyone what is due to them according to reason and law. This is exactly the purpose of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT): to put peoples back at the centre of international criminal law, especially when the international legal system stays blind to the crimes committed. The PPT was born to fight the crime of silence.

Founded in 1979 on Lelio Basso’s initiative, jurist and politician, the PPT represents the ideal continuation of the two Russell Tribunals on crimes committed in Vietnam (1966-67) and in Latin America (1973-76). Among those who have contributed to its activity over the years, there is Gianni Tognoni, current Secretary General. The Tribunal aims to promote and implement the Universal Declaration of Peoples’ Rights, adopted in Algiers on July 4, 1976, in an era marked by the process of decolonisation and self-determination conflicts. In the preamble of Algiers Declaration it is stated that “all the peoples of the world have an equal right to liberty, the right to free themselves from any foreign interference and to choose their own government, the right if they are under subjection, to fight for their liberation and the right to benefit from other peoples’ assistance in their struggle.”

The PPT is an international opinion tribunal which aims to bring to light violations of human rights when the official courts do not act. Justice, in fact, does not only belong to the countries, but also to the people themselves. The Tribunal collects evidence, gives opinions and formulates recommendations, which, even though are not binding, assume a moral and political value, giving back recognition and dignity to the victims.

From 1979 to date, the PPT has held more than fifty sessions worldwide, facing cases of genocide, war crimes, environmental disasters and systemic violations of fundamental rights. From Western Sahara to the Armenian genocide, from Chernobyl to the war in the former Yugoslavia, from Sri Lanka and the Tamil people to Rojava, going through sessions on the policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to living wage for garment workers in Asia, to the impunity for the systematic murder of journalists and to migrants’ rights.

From October 8 until 10, 2025, a PPT session took place in Madrid: it was centred on the women of Afghanistan and on gender-based crimes committed by the Taliban since their return to power in August 2021. This session had been requested by a coalition of Afghan organisations: Rawadari, Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), DROPS (Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies) and Human Rights Defenders Plus (HRD+), which have been collecting witnesses of Afghan women since December 2024.

Since the Taliban regained control of the country, on August 15, 2021, Afghan women and girls have been systematically excluded from public life. They have been forbidden to access secondary education and universities, have been excluded from paid employment, both in the public sector, in NGOs and international organisations, and they are forced to be accompanied by a male person (mahram) when travelling or even just to access healthcare. Consequently, their right to access health is critically restricted: women cannot study medicine anymore, and they cannot see male doctors without a mahram. Their freedom of movement, expression, assembly and political participation has therefore been strongly limited, if not devoid of its meaning. Emblematic of the societies desired by the Taliban is the obligation of maintaining a very rigid dress code, which deprives women of being recognised as such, as human beings.

The violation of these restrictions, imposed by more than 100 decrees, is punished with arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, tortures, sexual violences, incommunicado detentions, death threats and threats to family members. A witness described it as a system where “we are alive, but we are not living; we can barely breathe”. 

Madrid hearings have been held following the structure of a formal procedure. The Tribunal has officially notified the accuses to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Taliban regime, including the names of the accused leaders and recognising their right to defence. During the three days of hearings, the jury asked multiple times if representatives of the defence were present. No one showed up.

At the end of the hearings, the Panel of Judges issued a preliminary statement. The Judgment will be published in December 2025, but some responsibilities have already been recognised. The Panel stated that the Taliban’s conduct towards women and girls of Afghanistan constitutes the crime against humanity of gender persecution. Besides, they reminded that the Afghanistan obligations in terms of human rights, ruled by international treaties such as the CEDAW and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, remain binding even with a regime change: who exercises effective control over the territory remains bound by these obligations.

The case of Afghanistan has strongly reopened the discussion on the recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. The crime of gender persecution, although is serious, punishes individual conduct and is not enough to represent an international and institutionalized system which aims to people segregation based on their gender, and which is perpetrated with the purpose of maintaining a regime of domination. 

Madrid session has not only been a symbolic action against the Taliban, trying to give recognition and dignity back to Afghan women, but it has also been an action against the gaps of the international criminal law, which is still not able to break a crime of which is responsible: silence. A right that keeps being blind and ineffective against gender crimes.

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