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Download letter Dear Excellencies, We, the undersigned Afghanistan and international human rights and civil society organisations, write to you once again to share our concerns regarding the grave human rights and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and to reiterate the urgent need for accountability for gross, widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses that continue to be committed across Afghanistan, including crimes under international law, some of which may amount to crimes against humanity. We call on the UN Human Rights Council, at its upcoming 57th regular session to: renew and strengthen with the necessary resources, the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan; establish a parallel and complementary independent mechanism to investigate, collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of human rights violations and abuses and crimes under international law; and ensure continuation of a dedicated space for enhanced interactive dialogue on the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan with meaningful follow-up to the report of the Special Rapporteur on Taliban’s repression against women and girls. We further urge you to seriously consider the calls for the recognition and codification of gender apartheid as a crime under international law. This letter, just as in our previous letter shared ahead of the 54th session of the Council in September 2023, is an outcome of consultations with Afghanistan’s civil society and human rights defenders located inside and outside of the country and enjoys broad support from Afghanistan’s civil society. In the past three years, the Taliban have completely reversed measures previously adopted to enhance the promotion and protection of human rights in Afghanistan. The Taliban, as the de facto authority, have spurned Afghanistan’s international obligations and have continued to introduce arbitrary, unlawful and wide-ranging restrictions on human rights. With bans on secondary and higher education, employment, freedom of movement, women’s faces and voices in public, and other rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as access to essential services, women and girls are being erased from society According to the report of the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, in the months between June 2023 and March 2024 alone, the de facto authorities issued over 52 new edicts that impose further restrictions the rights of women and girls, effectively consolidating an institutionalised system of gender persecution, which is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. According to the Special Rapporteur’s report and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, the situation of human rights in Afghanistan with respect to women and girls is tantamount to “an institutionalized framework of gender apartheid”. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has documented 1033 instances of use of  force by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (MPVPV) , with a view to implementing arbitrary and unlawful restrictions on the human rights of women and girls. Moreover, women and girls belonging to minority communities and LGBTQI+ people continue to experience multiple layers of discrimination. Marginalisation and exclusion of religious and ethnic minorities in Afghanistan has been compounded under the Taliban. Religious communities, including Shias, Ismailis, Sikhs and Hindus, are banned from organising or participating in their religious and cultural ceremonies. Amid the deepening humanitarian and economic crises, the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s right to work have obstructed the monitoring of aid deliveries, notably to women-headed households and groups in vulnerable situations. Additionally, threats against minorities, in particular ethnic minorities like Hazaras, are further exacerbated by targeted attacks by armed groups, such as Islamic State of Khurasan Province (ISKP) operating in the country. LGBTQI+ people face compounded exclusion as well, and face unlawful detention, extortion, torture and killing. All forms of dissent and criticism of the Taliban result in harsh, arbitrary punishment and violent reprisals. Peaceful protestors, in particular women who protest the Taliban’s policies, human rights defenders, civil society activists, journalists, artists, musicians, judges, lawyers, educators, critics, and others continue to be targeted. They have been threatened, arrested, and subjected to arbitrary detention and as well as torture and other ill-treatment. Former government and security officials have been subjected to extrajudicial, arbitrary, and summary killings as well as mass executions and enforced disappearances. The Taliban have also carried out cruel and inhumane punishments including public executions, flogging and other forms of corporal punishment. Afghanistan’s formerly independent legal and judicial systems have been replaced by a system that is based on the Taliban’s own arbitrary interpretation of religious edicts and rulings, and no longer function in a way that could protect the rights of the people of Afghanistan. As a joint statement by over 28 UN Special Procedure mandates on 14 August 2024 makes clear “avenues for justice within Taliban-controlled Afghanistan [are] virtually non-existent.” This situation is worsened by the fact that the Taliban have prohibited the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan from accessing the country. The vast majority of crimes under international law and other serious human rights violations from the past, including summary killings and executions, tens of thousands of enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, torture and other ill-treatment by the former government, international forces, and armed groups who held power in parts of the country, remain unpunished. All of these violations have been committed with complete impunity, fuelling further cycles of violations and abuses. In this context, establishing a robust independent international investigative and accountability mechanism, with a mandate commensurate with the gravity and scale of the systematic and widespread violations and abuses of human rights, is necessary to advance justice and accountability in Afghanistan. The mechanism should have a mandate and sufficient financial and technical resources to adequately investigate, collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence, with a view to facilitating future criminal proceedings in national and international courts. Such a mechanism should be designed to advance accountability for past and ongoing violations and abuses of human rights and crimes under international law, including those faced by women and girls and LGBTQI+ people across Afghanistan. Therefore, we call upon Member and Observer States of the U.N. Human Rights Council, in addition to renewing the crucial mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, to establish an independent international mechanism for Afghanistan with a mandate to: Investigate all allegations of past and ongoing violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and international crimes, including the crimes against humanity of gender persecution; Collect, consolidate, and analyse evidence, and prepare files on past and ongoing violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including crimes under international law, with due consideration of the gender, child and minority dimensions surrounding such violations and abuses; and systematically record and preserve all information, documentation and evidence, including specific crimes against women and girls, in a manner consistent with international law standards and in view of future legal proceedings and accountability efforts; Identify, where possible, the individuals and entities responsible with a view to ensuring they are held accountable; Be provided with sufficient financial and technical resources. The mechanism should be staffed with independent international experts, including those with expertise on: international human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law; experts in armed conflict dynamics, with specific knowledge of command structures of armed forces and armed groups; sexual and other gender-based violence; children’s rights; the rights of people with disabilities; video and image verification; and forensic analysis; Cooperate with existing international judicial mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), that have a mandate over the situation in Afghanistan, as well as national courts; and, Make recommendations to UN entities and bodies, such as the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly, and to UN member states with a view to ending impunity and ensuring accountability, including on access to justice for victims. Such a mechanism would complement the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and complement and support the ongoing investigation by the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor into the situation in Afghanistan. We believe that the establishment of an independent international accountability mechanism for Afghanistan would: Strengthen pathways to victim- and survivor-centred justice and accountability in Afghanistan; Ensure that serious human rights violations and abuses across the country, including sexual and gender-based crimes, are investigated; and Contribute to preventing the recurrence of human rights violations and abuses, and ending the vicious cycles of violence in the country. We, therefore, urge Member and Observer States of the Council to stand in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan, and ensure all victims, survivors, and their families have credible and realistic prospects of justice and accountability.

Dear Excellencies, We write to you ahead of the third UN-convened meeting of Special Envoys and Special Representatives on Afghanistan on 30 June–1 July 2024 in Doha, Qatar (“Doha III”), to continue to discuss the international community’s approach to Afghanistan. More than one year since the first Doha meeting, there is growing concern that the international community lacks the necessary resolve to defend and advocate for the human rights of Afghan women and girls. Many Afghan women civil society have even called for a boycott of continued negotiations with the Taliban until women’s rights are restored. Doha III therefore offers a decisive opportunity to demonstrate to all Afghans that their human rights are not a bargaining chip, but the foundation on which the future of their country depends. Since the last Doha meeting in February 2024, the Taliban’s abuses against Afghan women and girls, already unparalleled globally and condemned by international experts as gender apartheid, have continued to deepen. The Taliban are not only continuing to impose new restrictions violating the rights of women and girls, now numbering 97, but steadily intensifying their enforcement of existing decrees. The space for women and girls to make their own decisions and live their lives gets smaller every day. This is a clear signal that the international community’s approach to Afghanistan has thus far failed to deter the Taliban from its systematic repression of women’s rights. The upcoming meeting in Doha is a critical moment for the UN, Security Council and international community to coordinate around one key message: the rights of Afghan women and girls are not negotiable.

Dear President Biden: We write as organizations with a steadfast commitment to justice for grave international crimes and therefore to the success of the International Criminal Court (ICC). We urge your administration to oppose the threats and calls for punitive actions against the Court that several U.S. lawmakers have recently made. Acting on these calls would do grave harm to the interests of all victims globally and to the U.S. government’s ability to champion human rights and the cause of justice, which are stated priorities of your administration. Accountability is important for its own sake and protects against the commission of future atrocity crimes. Acting where it has jurisdiction and within its mandate as a court of last resort, the ICC works together with national authorities to ensure perpetrators of such crimes are held to account and that victims and affected communities find some measure of justice. While the United States is not an ICC member country, Republican and Democratic administrations have supported the Court in specific cases, and the U.S. has assisted arrest operations to bring justice to victims in central Africa. Your own administration has recognized the Court’s essential role to address serious crimes in Ukraine and Darfur. We are alarmed by threats that U.S. lawmakers have aimed at the Court in recent weeks including the letter sent on April 24 by Senators, threatening to sanction the ICC prosecutor’s “employees and associates,” if steps were taken to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials. On May 20, the ICC prosecutor requested warrants for leaders of Hamas and Israeli officials stemming from his ongoing Palestine investigation; ICC judges will assess the request to determine whether to issue warrants.

We the undersigned are writing to you to raise concern regarding the decision by several European governments to suspend or review their funding to several Palestinian and Israeli civil society organizations. We are deeply concerned by these developments and call on your government to reverse any decision to halt such crucial funding. A reduction in funds to these groups and organizations erodes human rights protections across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and call into question your ability to credibly promote and protect universal human rights values across the Middle East and North Africa. Several European states, namely Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as the European Commission have taken measures to suspend or review their funding to Palestinian and Israeli civil society organizations due to unfounded allegations of diversion of funding to terrorist organizations. These measures have intensified following the attacks by Hamas and other armed groups on 7 October 2023, where members of Hamas and other armed groups committed summary killings, hostage-taking of civilians, and launching indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.

We have witnessed unfathomable death and destruction in the Gaza Strip and Israel. Thousands of people have been killed, injured, displaced, and nearly two hundred remain held hostage, including children and elderly. In Gaza, the UN has said that water, food, fuel, medical supplies, and even body bags, are running out due to the siege. The UN warned that people – particularly young children – will soon start dying of severe dehydration. Neighbourhoods have been destroyed and turned into complete rubble. Palestinians in search of safety have nowhere to go. Many of those who relocated from northern Gaza to the south after the relocation order by the Israeli army were reportedly bombed as they attempted to flee or once they arrived in southern Gaza.   The events of the last week have led us to the precipice of a humanitarian catastrophe and the world can no longer wait to act. It is our collective responsibility. On Sunday, October 15th, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator to the Occupied Palestinian Territory appealed to all parties to the conflict, and to Member States with influence, to urgently agree to a humanitarian ceasefire. Today, we put our voices together and call on all Heads of State, the UN Security Council, and actors on the ground, to prioritize the preservation of human life above all else. During this ceasefire, we call on all parties to unconditionally: Facilitate the delivery of lifesaving assistance, including food, medical supplies, fuel, and the resumption of electricity and internet to Gaza, in addition to safe passage of humanitarian and medical staff   Free all civilian hostages, especially children and elderly Allow humanitarian convoys to reach UN facilities, schools, hospitals, and health facilities in northern Gaza and commit to protecting them along with the civilians and staff inside them at all times Rescind orders by the Government of Israel for civilians to depart northern Gaza Allow patients in critical condition to be medically evacuated for urgent care The UN Security Council, the UN Secretary General and all world leaders with influence must take immediate action to ensure a ceasefire comes into effect. It remains our only option to avert further loss of civilian life and humanitarian catastrophe. Anything less will forever be a stain on our collective conscience. Civilians are not bargaining chips. Families need a chance to bury and mourn their dead. The cycle of violence against innocent civilians needs to stop.

At the end of June, the UN General Assembly will be called to vote on a resolution to establish an independent institution to clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing people in the Syrian Arab Republic, a milestone in the international community’s response to the Syrian conflict. Since 2011, more than 100,000 individuals have gone missing or been forcibly disappeared by Syrian authorities and other parties to the conflict, including armed groups such as ISIL. In 2021, Syrian families and survivors called for the creation of a new independent, humanitarian institution that will focus on victims’ inalienable right to know the truth about their loved ones. The call to establish such a new institution is supported by the UN Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The independent institution will be the first-ever response to the Syrian conflict to be entirely imagined and developed by Syrian victims and survivors of enforced disappearance and families of missing persons. The efforts made by Syrian families need the broadest and strongest support possible. We, therefore, call on UN member states to support the families’ right to truth by voting in favor of the resolution. Voting for the resolution will constitute a major step towards bringing long-awaited answers to thousands of families who have been suffering loss and uncertainty. Progress on this issue is fundamental to families, communities and society as a whole. The international community must extend a hand of practical support and assistance to families and victims in need. The people of Syria deserve no less.

Excellencies, We, the undersigned civil society organisations, urge you to call for and support an urgent debate at the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council regarding the women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan. We further urge you to support a resolution responding to this crisis. Since August 2021, when the Taliban took control of the country, there has been an enormous deterioration in the recognition and protection of the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, including with respect to the rights to non-discrimination, education, work, public participation, health, and sexual and reproductive health. The Taliban has also imposed sweeping restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement for women and girls. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to expressly prohibit girls’ education. In the last few weeks, the situation has worsened dramatically, with a Taliban directive that women and girls must fully cover themselves in public, including their faces, and leave home only in cases of necessity. International investigations, witness testimony and video evidence indicate that women human rights defenders and others protesting against the restrictions and violations have been subject to home invasions, threats, abductions, enforced disappearances, and assaults with electric devices and chemical sprays. Read the Full Letter

By Maftuna Saidova June 26th was the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. In honor of this day, we should remember the victims who were tortured (and continue to be tortured) in Syrian detention centers and evaluate what is being done to hold the perpetrators responsible. Neither the Syrian government nor the international community has taken any significant steps to address or mitigate the violations happening in in Syria. Under the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the state–who should be responsible for protecting its citizens–has been acting as the perpetrator. Under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad, those who are deemed as a threat to the government continue to be tortured in the detention centers. Moreover, the two mechanisms set out by the Convention Against Torture, meant to protect victims, have not been fully employed–leaving the victims defenseless against their own government. As a result, many Syrians continue to live in fear, knowing that their government could strip them of their rights at any moment. Under Article 14 of the Convention Against Torture, state parties to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, are required to, “ensure in its legal system that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation, including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible.” Acts of “redress” can include reparations for the victims such as rehabilitation, compensation, and guarantees of non-repetition. However in this case the Syriangovernment is the perpetrator, which makes it highly unlikely that any types of reparations will be provided to the victims by the government. This is why the role of the international community is especially important for the Syrian victims. Under Article 9 of CAT, the international community has the power to refer Syria and Assad to the International Criminal Court and “afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with criminal proceedings.” This would allow the victims of Assad’s regime to receive retribution and possibly rescue for those who are currently being interrogated without having to consider the sovereignty of the state itself. However, Russia and China, two of the five permanent members of the Security Council, have vetoed all UN attempts to refer Syria to the ICC which means that Assad and his brutal regime will stay in power and have the authority to continue their torture tactics on those who they consider as threats in the region. Unless these measures are implemented, the victims in these detention centers will continue to be tortured and the brutal regime in Syria will remain in power. Although universal jurisdiction can be used, as some lawyers have initiated to build a case against Assad in Germany, it will not be able to protect the victims including the women who are being shamed by their communities for the rapes they endured in the detention centers. More importantly, the failure to implement these mechanisms will result in the normalization of such violations around the world. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons\Press of the President of Russian Federation\CC BY 4.0

By Merrite Johnson Daesh’s crimes against queer Iraqis (or people perceived of being queer, or not sufficiently adhering to traditional gender norms) have been well-documented, including harassment campaigns, arbitrary executions, and forced disappearances. These crimes were also a tactic for building popular support for Daesh’s rule. Since the UN voted last year to create an international team to investigate crimes Daesh committed in Iraq, human rights advocates including the Global Justice Center have called repeatedly for the team to follow international laws and standards as they investigate all crimes, not just those of terrorism. Earlier this year, GJC published its analysis of Iraq’s national laws, which are woefully insufficient for achieving justice for victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and gender-based violence. If Daesh crimes are going to be prosecuted in domestic Iraqi courts, there is a very real danger that these venues will shut out LGBTQ Iraqis from seeking justice. But Daesh isn’t the only group responsible for violence against LGBTQ Iraqis. A report published earlier this year by IraQueer found that 96% of LGBTQ respondents in Iraq have faced some form of violence over the past three years, and there have been documented killing campaigns against queer people in Iraq every year since 2003—well before the arrival of Daesh. The Iraqi government has completely failed to protect its queer citizens from harassment and violence; even worse, state forces have been active participants in targeted anti-LGBTQ violence alongside conservative militias. If the international community really is committed to justice, it must ensure not only that queer voices are included in Daesh prosecutions, but also that the Iraqi government is held to its obligations under human rights treaties like the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Now is the time to take action to prove that justice for queer people is not optional.