On 25 September 2024, the foreign ministers from Germany, Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands announced at the United Nations General Assembly in New York they had taken all steps necessary to file a complaint against the Taliban with the International Court of Justice. According to New York Times reporting, the four countries said the “gross and systematic human rights violations and abuses in Afghanistan, particularly the gender-based discrimination of women and girls,” violate the ‘Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’ – an international women’s rights treaty signed and ratified by many of the world’s nations in 1979, including Afghanistan in 2003 (the United States has not done so).

Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Caspar Veldkamp posted on Platform X writing, “The situation of Afghan women and girls is heartbreaking. They are almost entirely excluded from public life. We cannot accept this.” Following suit, the German Foreign Office X account posted comments from Minister Annalena Baerbock: “Making use of the possibilities of the women’s rights convention will not change the situation in Afghanistan today. But it gives the women of Afghanistan hope. We see you, we hear you. We speak for you when you are silenced.”

Hamdullah Fitrat, a Taliban government spokesman, interviewed with Agence France-Presse to deny the claims saying, “The accusations made by some countries and parties on Afghanistan violating human rights and gender discrimination are unfounded.” Fitrat added that in Afghanistan “no one is treated with discrimination” and that the efforts from the four nations are an attempt “to spread propaganda.”

Forbes Magazine explained in their reporting that the complaint cannot be officially filed with the I.C.J. for six months, and the formal rules of the Court require a notification to the accused government of a dispute. In Article 29 of the C.E.D.A.W., the countries may try and solve the violation dispute out-of-court, but, after six months if no arbitration is successful, the Parties may refer the case to the I.C.J. Fobes wrote that if no resolution is reached, Afghanistan would be the first country seen by the I.C.J. for allegations of discrimination against women.

The announcement of preparations to file with the I.C.J. comes three years after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, and the retake of Kabul by the Taliban government, and one month after the Taliban released a 114-page document legalizing its restrictions on women’s movement including a ban on women attending secondary school and university and traveling without a male relative. The decisions made by The Hague are legally binding with no possibility of appeal, but not enforceable due to the nature of sovereign states.

 “We knew what was coming as soon as the Taliban arrived,” Ghizal Haress, a former official ombudsperson in Kabul before fleeing in 2021, said to the N.Y.T. “But we are now making sure that the many women are not forgotten who live under a system of violence and gender apartheid.”