Western hypocrisy gives Taliban a free hand to abuse women
The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a resolution that expressed 'deep concern' over Afghanistan's dire human rights situation. It urged the Taliban to halt the 'grave, worsening, widespread and systematic oppression' of women and girls and respect international law.
This was followed by a recent International Criminal Court (ICC) announcement that it was issuing arrest warrants for Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for crimes against humanity against women and girls since the group retook power in August 2021.
The decision by the pretrial chamber of the ICC to pursue Akhundzada and Haqqani was in response to a January request by prosecutor Karim Khan KC, who accused the Taliban of the severe deprivation of physical integrity and autonomy, freedom of movement and expression, education, private and family life and freedom of assembly of Afghan women and girls.
The Taliban's abysmal treatment of women is well documented. The UN says the Taliban has 'deliberately deprived' 14.4 million girls of education. It has also banned women from working in most sectors, including for international aid agencies. This has left a generation of women and girls without agency, and many families without their previous primary breadwinner.
The Taliban has also issued over 70 edicts directly targeting the rights and autonomy of women and girls, including enforcement of veil-wearing and bans on access to public parks and beauty parlors. The Taliban's policies have been referred to as 'gender apartheid' by UN experts and human rights organizations, and female suicide rates in Afghanistan have soared as a result.
The Taliban attempted to sidestep the ICC in February when it announced it was withdrawing from the Rome Statute. The Taliban reiterated that stance this week, saying it did not recognize the 'so-called international court' while accusing the international community and its courts of double standards.
But despite what the Taliban thinks, the court still has jurisdiction in Afghanistan after the former government acceded to the Rome Statute in 2003. This means Akhundzada and Haqqani risk arrest if they leave the country.
It also opens the door for more warrants, including for Sheikh Mohammad Khalid, the head of the notorious Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice responsible for the cruel decrees against Afghan women and girls.
This is a significant blow to the Taliban's quest for international legitimacy. The group thought it had a diplomatic victory earlier this month when it was formally recognized by Russia, but others will now seriously reconsider following suit because of obligations under the Rome Statute and pressure from civil society groups at home.
Taliban hopes of taking Afghanistan's seat at the UN are also now unlikely, having already been denied four times since it returned to power in 2021. But when the Taliban accuses the world of hypocrisy, it has a point.
While the international community has targeted the Taliban for crimes against women, it has failed to hold Israel accountable for crimes against civilians in Gaza, including an estimated 28,000 women and girls killed since October 2023.
The Taliban highlighted these double standards on July 8, saying, 'It is shameful to speak of human rights, justice, and international courts while genocide is being committed in Gaza, where hundreds of innocent women and children are killed daily before the eyes of these very courts.'
Many Western countries have also failed to uphold their obligations under the Rome Statute by failing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was issued an arrest warrant by the ICC last year.
Earlier this month, Netanyahu flew over signatory states Greece, Italy and France on his way to Washington, and none intervened to arrest the Israeli PM or order the plane to avoid their airspace. [The US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute].
Others have gone further. In February, the US took the unprecedented step of sanctioning the ICC over its then-investigation of Israeli crimes in Gaza. The UK reportedly threatened to withdraw from the court if warrants were issued against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Australia claimed the ICC was wrongly drawing 'equivalence' between Hamas and Israel, a clear attempt to undermine the investigation and protect Israel from accountability.
The double standards are obvious and add weight to claims that Western countries in particular pick and choose when international law applies, and thus undermine any attempt to hold the Taliban accountable. The group has no incentive to respect a system of law that is applied selectively and will instead stop listening to lectures and double down on its repressive policies on women.
In the immediate term, Akhundzada and Haqqani will simply avoid travel outside of Afghanistan, which they rarely do anyway. Any condemnation from the international community can be batted away by pointing to the horrifying number of Palestinian women and girls killed by Israeli bombs in Gaza, and the level of impunity Netanyahu enjoys in the US and Europe.
Scorned by the international community, the Taliban will instead rely increasingly on China and Russia for diplomatic support and economic deals. The group is also deepening ties with its neighbors Pakistan, India and Iran, and countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar. These countries are happy to prioritize Afghanistan's strategic position in Asia over human rights, and none are signatories to the ICC.
Afghan women and girls deserve support, and the Taliban should be held accountable for their crimes. But rank double standards betray the very same people the international community wants and aims to help.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
AllAfrica
13 hours ago
- AllAfrica
North Korea-Russia alliance more than a 'brotherhood of arms'
The three-day visit earlier this month of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the North Korean coastal city of Wonsan marked a noticeable intensification of a strategic relationship between the two neighbors. The sheer trappings of the visit—from lavish treatment at newly opened resort to a tete-a-tete aboard North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's yacht—sent that message. And it was accompanied by other symbols of tightening ties, from renewed rail and air flight links to ballyhooed visits of Russian tourists to the resort and the dispatch of North Korean artificial intelligence (AI) researchers to Russia. As a result of signing a treaty in June 2024, Lavrov told Russian reporters, 'we became allies.' But now there is a 'deepening of ties…rooted not only in our geographic proximity but also in our alignment on key issues,' not least on the Ukraine war and on countering American presence in the Indo-Pacific. Lavrov spoke about a 'brotherhood of arms,' about Russian readiness to defend North Korea and 'jointly resist the hegemonic aspirations of extra-regional players.' While the war with Ukraine served as the catalyst for this 'brotherhood,' as the North Koreans stepped up to provide Russia with crucial supplies of men and material at a moment last year when their campaign was faltering, it is by no means the only driver of their growing bilateral cooperation. Their shared mission to resist Western dominance and the mutual economic and political benefits that are forming between these two countries may serve as a cornerstone for a new world order. The massive transfer of North Korean weapons and the deployment of more than 11,000 troops to the Ukraine frontlines is the most visible sign of their alignment. North Korea provided a crucial influx of millions of artillery rounds as well as more than 100 ballistic missiles which have been raining down on Ukrainian cities. It is a two-way street, with sharing of Russian military technology, particularly drones, in return. Russian oil and food flows freely, effectively nullifying the United Nations (UN) sanctions regime. This is documented in a recent detailed report on 'Unlawful Military Cooperation including Arms Transfers between North Korea and Russia,' issued in late May by the 11-nation Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team. Less strategic, but increasingly important, is the flow of North Korean workers to Russia, also in violation of UN sanctions. According to an investigative report by the émigré Russian journal 'The Insider,' some 'thousands of North Koreans are entering Russia, posing as students on 'practical training,' but instead coming to labor under slave-like conditions.' In the Russian Far East, 'North Koreans are very much back,' at levels not seen since before Covid-19, according to a Russian scholar based in Vladivostok, in an email exchange.[1] The illicit transfers are significant, but there are other shifts in Russian policy that may be even more consequential. Russia, once a stalwart protector the nuclear non-proliferation regime, has now nakedly endorsed the legitimacy of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, something even China has balked at doing. Asked by Russian reporters to comment on what conclusions Pyongyang may have drawn from the US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, the veteran Russian diplomat gave the nuclear status of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) a blanket approval: The DPRK leadership drew its conclusions regarding national defence long before the recent US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is precisely because those conclusions were made in a timely manner that no serious actor contemplates a military strike against the DPRK today. Nevertheless, we are witnessing ongoing military buildup around the Korean Peninsula, driven by the United States in coordination with South Korea and Japan. We caution against the misuse of alliances and partnerships as tools of confrontation, including any efforts to direct them against the DPRK or the Russian Federation. The technologies applied by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are a result of efforts by North Korean scientists. We respect the DPRK's actions and understand the reasons why they carry out their nuclear programme. While the Russians have avoided direct aid to the North Korean nuclear program, they have cleared the way to assistance and technology transfer to assist nominally civilian satellite development and launch efforts. 'The provision of technologies and know-how related to the satellite program is not completely prohibited in the eyes of Russia, since the exploration of outer space, from the point of view of Russia, is the legal right of the DPRK,' wrote leading Russia-Korea expert Georgy Toloraya following the Lavrov visit. Perhaps equally important, the Russians have embraced Kim Jong Un's policy shift toward abandonment of unification as a goal and opposition to any sustained engagement with South Korea. 'Russia has de facto recognized the legitimacy of Kim Jong-un's concept of the existence of two separate, unfriendly states on the Korean Peninsula and the rejection of the idea of the unification of Korea, under the slogan of which South Korea has been planning to absorb the North for decades,' wrote Toloraya. The relationship with Pyongyang 'lays the foundation for building a new Eurasian security system.' For Russian strategists, North Korea has now acquired a status that is similar to Belarus, its military and political ally in the West. 'This is precisely how the Kremlin sees North Korea these days: as an easternmost strategic bulwark of the Russia-led anti-Western security bloc,' says Igor Torbakov, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden. Moscow's backing only serves to reinforce the hardline coming out of Pyongyang toward the US, particularly their fierce rebuff of new overtures from the progressive Lee Jae Myung administration that has come to power in Seoul. 'No matter how desperately the Lee Jae Myung government may … pretend they do all sorts of righteous things to attract our attention and receive international attention, there can be no change in our state's understanding of the enemy and they can not turn back the hands of the clock of the history which has radically changed the character of the DPRK-ROK relations,' Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, said this week. On the surface, the Russian alliance with North Korea exists in parallel and even reinforces the long-standing alliance with China. It may even be seen as a tripartite axis in which all three countries share a goal of reducing the American presence and in countering the security cooperation structure of South Korea, Japan and the US. But analysts have pointed to signs that Beijing is less than happy with the burgeoning Moscow-Pyongyang ties, avoiding direct comment on them and signaling indirectly their less-than-enthusiastic response. 'Beijing does not want North Korea to start a war or trigger increased US military deployments to the region, even though it may see North Korea as a useful way to distract the US-South Korea-Japan alliance from its focus on the PRC,' a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War concluded. 'Moscow has less interest than Beijing in maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula and may embolden North Korea to increase its bellicosity.' Russian analysts counter that their alliance is a force for stability, not a spur to North Korean adventurism.[2] Russian assistance to North Korea's conventional warfare capability strengthens the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula and in the Northeast Asian region, they argue. But Russian experts also provide support to the idea that there is a rivalry with Beijing at work. Compared to the security ties with Russia, the long-standing alliance with China, formalized in a 1961 treaty, offers little in terms of security and is a faux alliance, argued Russian scholar Artyom Lukin from the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok. 'China will likely remain Pyongyang's main economic partner and benefactor, but there is little reason for Beijing to empower Pyongyang with large-scale military assistance,' Lukin wrote in a paper presented on July 17th to a conference at Seoul National University. 'For one, Beijing does not want to antagonize Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo by transferring weapons and military-related technology to Pyongyang.'[3] Lukin suggests that Chinese interest in North Korea as an ally is waning and that they may even abandon it in favor of South Korea. It's not inconceivable that Beijing might eventually conclude a Korea unified under Seoul—provided it remains friendly or at least neutral toward China—is preferable to a divided peninsula with its constant risk of major conflict. Pyongyang cannot but suspect that, sooner or later, Beijing will throw the Kims under the bus. Regardless of what is going to happen in the future, the 1961 alliance of China and North Korea has long been hollow. The Russian scholar, a widely cited expert on geopolitics and the region, as well as US foreign policy, also points to another advantage held by Moscow—the close personal relationship between Kim Jong Un and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. 'Kim feels at ease with Putin, even though he shows due respect to the Russian czar,' he told the South Korean conference. 'He will never be comfortable with the Chinese emperor.' North Korea's confidence in its Russian ally may have taken a hit from Moscow's failure to come to the defense of Iran. But North Koreans may also feel this pact is much more substantial and, in any case, their nuclear capability gives them protection that Iran lacked. What are the implications of the alliance for the future of the Korean peninsula? Does it make North Korea more adventurous, or more confident in its power? Does it create better conditions for Pyongyang to engage in diplomacy with the United States and Seoul? Or the opposite? Some analysts have argued that the alliance with Russia is essentially transactional, fueled by Moscow's need for Korean weapons and soldiers to prosecute the war in Ukraine. 'Most immediately, North Korea's current level of trade with Russia is unlikely to last after hostilities in Ukraine end,' Andrei Lankov, a respected Russian analyst long based in South Korea, wrote in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs. 'Indeed, Moscow's financial flows to Pyongyang could wind down almost overnight. Aside from munitions, there isn't much of a trade opportunity between the two countries; the two economies are fundamentally incompatible,' Lankov said. In this view, North Korea, worried about its dependence on China, could then seek ties with the US, even South Korea, responding to overtures from both the Trump administration and the new administration in Seoul. The deepening of ties and the Russian embrace of Kim Jong Un's concept of a permanent division of the Peninsula, along with a dramatic reversal of their support for denuclearization, suggest otherwise. For the foreseeable future, Russia has become a backer of a status quo marked by hard lines of division globally and in Korea. And in its most visionary terms, Russians see this as a cornerstone of their bid to create a viable alternative to the US-led international system. As Toloraya concluded, 'the Russian-North Korean alliance could become a factor in the creation of a new system of security and cooperation in Northeast Asia.' Daniel Sneider, email exchange with author. Artyom Lukin, 'The New geopolitics of the Korean Peninsula and Beyond: a view from Russia,' (paper presented at Far Eastern Federal University to the CR Life Foundation Special conference 'The Global Context Surrounding the Korean Peninsula and Korea's Choice for Peace,' Seoul, Republic of Korea, July 17, 2025). Ibid. This article first appeared on 38 North and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here.
RTHK
16 hours ago
- RTHK
Gaza on brink of full-scale famine, UN agencies warn
Gaza on brink of full-scale famine, UN agencies warn UN agencies say all barriers to food aid must be removed immediately to prevent mass starvation in Gaza. Photo: Reuters Gaza is slipping into famine, UN agencies warned on Tuesday, as the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said the Palestinian death toll in the nearly 22-month war had topped 60,000. The World Food Programme, Unicef and the Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that time was running out and that Gaza was "on the brink of a full-scale famine". "We need to flood Gaza with large-scale food aid, immediately and without obstruction, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation," WFP executive director Cindy McCain said in a joint statement from the agencies. This week, Israel launched daily pauses in its military operations in some parts of Gaza and opened secure routes to enable UN agencies and other aid groups to distribute food in the densely populated territory of more than two million. However, Israeli strikes continued overnight, killing 30 people in the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Gaza's civil defence agency – experts warned a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions is imminent. "The worst-case scenario of famine is now unfolding in the Gaza Strip," said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a group of monitors who advise the United Nations on impending crises. The IPC stopped short of declaring a state of famine, but made clear the situation is critical. In a statement released ahead of the IPC report, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office accused Hamas of distorting casualty figures and of looting food intended for civilians. "While the situation in Gaza is difficult and Israel has been working to ensure aid delivery, Hamas benefits from attempting to fuel the perception of a humanitarian crisis," his office said. "We already allow significant amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza every single day, including food, water and medicine. Unfortunately, Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population, many times by shooting Palestinians." Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on March 2 after ceasefire talks broke down. In late May, it began allowing a small trickle of aid to resume, amid warnings of a wave of starvation. Then on Sunday, faced with mounting international criticism, Israel began a series of "tactical pauses" while allowing aid trucks to pass through two border crossings into Gaza, and Jordanian and Emirati planes to conduct airdrops. Deliveries have been ramped up, but the IPC said this effort would not prove enough unless aid agencies were granted "immediate, unimpeded" humanitarian access. "Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the Strip," it said, adding that 16 children under the age of five had died of hunger since July 17. (AFP)
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- South China Morning Post
UN court denies ‘Butcher of Bosnia' Ratko Mladic early release from prison
A UN court on Tuesday denied a request for early release from Ratko Mladic, a military leader during the 1990s Yugoslav wars known as the 'Butcher of Bosnia'. Advertisement Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 over genocide and war crimes, filed a request to be freed on June 3 saying he only had a few months to live. But a judge at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the court tasked with handling remaining cases from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, said his condition did not meet the threshold of an 'acute terminal illness' required for release. 'I acknowledge that Mladic's current condition, which requires dependency on others for activities of daily living, is precarious,' judge Graciela Gatti Santana said in a 12-page decision issued in The Hague. 'Nonetheless, Mladic continues to receive very comprehensive and compassionate care, as amply supported by medical reports. Advertisement 'The information before me demonstrates that the compelling humanitarian circumstances invoked by Mladic as a basis for his release are not substantiated.' Mladic, now in his 80s, was sentenced by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his role in the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
