Nuremberg’s symbolism has been poignantly woven throughout Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine. Russia denies that the Red Army committed any crimes during World War II and criminalizes critiques exposing them. By fortifying narratives about its allegedly unique role in defeating Nazis and branding Ukrainians as their successors, Russia assigns itself the role of a liberator who can never be a perpetrator – neither during World War II, nor during the ongoing aggression. Hence, the requested blanket amnesties.

The Kremlin’s demands for amnesties are not new – they have been persistent since its initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014. During and following the Minsk negotiations in 2015, Russia opposed not only atrocity prosecutions, but any holistic support to survivors, through reparations and other transitional justice measures. 

Such demands contravene the spirit and letter of international law.

International law is adamant on States’ duty to prosecute, punish, and prevent international crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression – as well as serious human rights violations such as enforced disappearances and torture. The universally ratified Geneva Conventions that protect civilians, prisoners of war, and wounded in war also oblige States to prosecute or extradite alleged perpetrators. Statutes of limitation do not apply – these atrocities may be tried decades after commission. War-related amnesties are possible, but only for sedition-like activities – not for the gravest international crimes. The rise of amnesties for military junta-era atrocities during democratic transitions and peace processes across Latin America prompted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to consistently confirm the inadmissibility of amnesties for serious human rights violations. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission has recommended that States avoid far-reaching amnesty legislation. Nuanced prosecutions can also contribute to truth-seeking and wider redress, which can be essential to sustainable post-conflict recovery.

Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war are well-documented: they include widespread torture and sexual violence, enforced disappearances, child deportation, and concerted attacks on hospitals, power stations and civilian areas.

Several considerations prevent Ukraine – and its democratic and law-abiding partners – from agreeing to amnesties or de facto impunity for such atrocities. 

First, ceding more territories to the Kremlin, as the “peace” plan also proposes, would expose more Ukrainians to Russian crimes. International law’s prohibition of torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide is absolute. Russia has disregarded this prohibition consistently by committing or facilitating  numerous atrocities in Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, CAR, and elsewhere – and has also  withdrawn from the Council of Europe anti-torture convention. Joining agreements which would place Ukrainians under the direct reach of the Russian government and in the viable danger of such atrocities, with no prospect of accountability, would arguably breach peremptory norms of international law. This would make such arrangements void under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (see article 53, for instance).

Second, Russia’s amnesty demands, unlawful from the outset, cannot restrain numerous prosecutions of its atrocities launched globally. Apart from Ukraine’s 204,000+ war crime proceedings (reflecting individual incidents, per Ukraine’s Code of Criminal Procedure), Russians’ crimes are investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC), with six arrest warrants, and by third countries, under universal jurisdiction. The Council of Europe has recently endorsed the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine. Under international law, treaties do not bind non-parties. In contrast, all States must prosecute international crimes – or extradite the suspects for trial. Regardless of what temporary arrangements might be imposed on Kyiv, countries around the world should continue their investigations of Russian perpetrators, back the aggression tribunal and step up their support for the ICC, in its work on Ukraine and globally.

Crucially, justice for war crimes has been consistently demanded by Ukrainians, even during the most challenging periods of the invasion. Eighty-two percent of Ukrainians find trials “very important,” and ninety percent emphasise the urgency of supplementary redress through non-judicial channels such as reparations and truth-seeking. This stance is supported by leading actors: the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner emphasize that justice is not a hindrance, but a pre-condition to sustainable peace for Ukraine.

Any compromise on prosecuting Russian perpetrators would further undermine the fragile system of international criminal justice painstakingly developed since World War II and Nuremberg. Amnesties for Russian war criminals would question the standing of the ICC amid one of its most vulnerable periods and its pending arrest warrants, against Vladimir Putin, but also other State leaders. Russia has used double-tap attacks and conducted warfare by means of atrocities in Ukraine, Syria, Mali and elsewhere. It may even create a precedent that would shield ex-Syrian President al-Assad, responsible for mass torture and many other serious crimes against Syrians (and already benefitting from Russian protection). Giving the Kremlin an accountability carte blanche would signal impunity to victims of al-Assad and other abusers backed by Russia and its proxies. Allowing the Kremlin to get away with crimes against humanity would also gravely weaken international efforts to conclude an overdue international treaty against these crimes.

Nuremberg was far from perfect. Hitler and some of his clique escaped by committing suicide or through the ratlines of the Cold War. Some convicted Nazi-lenient industrialists obtained early releases, as post-war Europe accelerated its economic recovery. And yet, with all of Nuremberg’s flaws, it was “one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason,” as emphasised by Robert Jackson, Nuremberg’s Chief Prosecutor for the United States and (and a U.S. Supreme Court Justice). It prevented the likes of Göring or Ribbentrop from walking around freely, without charge or trial.

We should not establish a precedent to the contrary now.

The post History and International Law Proscribe Amnesties for Russian War Crimes appeared first on Just Security.

But a confluence of factors threatens to reignite the conflict and potentially destabilize the wider region: the Ethiopian government’s failure to fully implement the agreement, a lack of justice and accountability, and a split within Tigray’s leadership, one faction backing the government in Addis Ababa and the other siding with leaders in neighboring Eritrea who had supported Addis during the war. To prevent further deterioration, regional and international actors, including the United States, which played a significant diplomatic role in the deal’s signing, must spotlight the risks in the region, re-engage, impose sanctions on spoilers, and support political dialogue and reconciliation efforts across Ethiopia. Furthermore, to reduce human suffering among the hundreds of thousands of people still displaced in the region, aid providers and donors must scale up humanitarian assistance immediately.

In addition to the death toll over just two years, the 2020-2022 Tigray War also led to the collapse of the region’s healthcare system and the destruction of healthcare facilities. Agriculture and other food-related infrastructure indispensable to the population’s survival were destroyed, inducing acute food shortages and nutritional crises. In some regions, including Tigray, 62 percent of children under 5 are experiencing acute malnutrition, according to a study led by the United Nations, the European Union, and local authorities. An assessment by Tigrayan health researchers found already in the year after the war that “Starvation was the leading cause of death across all ages in the study group.” Local aid workers on the ground have indicated in interviews with our team that deaths due to starvation have increased, as have deaths due to untreated illness and preventable conditions like hypertension and diabetes.

The Pretoria Agreement, signed in November 2022, called for the cessation of hostilities, full humanitarian access, the withdrawal from western Tigray of Eritrean troops and other forces from other regions, and transitional justice. But while active fighting stopped, many of the agreement’s terms remain aspirational. Despite the call for withdrawal of foreign and non-federal forces, large parts of Western, Southern, and Northern Tigray remain under the control of Amhara regional forces and Eritrean troops. These forces continue to perpetrate grave abuses with impunity – sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, abductions, torture, and widespread land seizures.

The Pain of Aid Cuts

Furthermore, Tigray, like other regions in Ethiopia, has felt the pain of aid cuts by major donors, including the United States. Ethiopia had been one of the top recipients of foreign aid from the United States, receiving $1.8 billion in assistance for food, healthcare, education, job assistance, and more in 2023. Most of those programs were halted after the U.S. freeze on foreign aid. Local groups have decried the impact on children with HIV/AIDS who could no longer access their medications.

More than 760,000 people are still internally displaced, unable to return home, rebuild their lives, or even reclaim their lands, in part because one-third of the region is occupied by Eritrean or Amhara forces and the previous residents don’t feel safe returning. A recent study of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Tigray conducted by the Commission of Inquiry on Tigray Genocide, an investigative body established by Tigrayan regional authorities, indicates that some have not received any aid since they were displaced years ago. Others have experienced a suspension of food distribution for months at a time. Those who do receive aid report that the quality is poor, including spoiled maize grain (kernels) or sorghum unfit for consumption.

Children have been out of school for years, with only 40 percent of school-aged children having enrolled in school as of about a year ago. About 2.4 million school-aged children were not attending schools, partly because 88 percent of school infrastructure was damaged. Many displaced families seek shelter in crowded schools that are unsafe and unsanitary, or they sleep in the open air.

Tigray’s women and girls have borne some of the worst scars of the conflict: sexual violence was pervasive, and some have still not received treatment for physical injuries and the psychological toll or have been shunned by their communities. Health groups in Tigray emphasize that many of the survivors continue to need support to cope with the trauma of sexual slavery, gang rape, and other horrifying attacks.

It is not surprising, then, that many IDPs feel abandoned and hopeless. The world rallied behind the Pretoria Agreement as a path to peace and recovery, but failed to sustain pressure on Ethiopia and other actors to uphold it. Donor fatigue and geopolitical distractions have left aid and development in Tigray and Ethiopia’s other regions dangerously underfunded. Without sustained pressure, the Pretoria Agreement risks joining a long list of African peace deals that looked good on paper but collapsed in practice, leaving the most vulnerable to pay the price.

Tigray is not the only Ethiopian region affected by the cuts in humanitarian aid. The Gambella region in western Ethiopia near the South Sudanese border hosts around 40 percent of the country’s refugee population of more than 1 million. Most of those refugees are from South Sudan. Since last year, refugees in some of Gambella’s camps have been surviving on just a fraction of the recommended daily food ration, and now there is a risk that the ration will be reduced further.

Honoring Commitments and Re-Engaging for Peace

A genuine peace in Tigray requires more than declarations; it demands enforcement, justice, and political courage. The Ethiopian government must honor its commitments by ensuring the withdrawal of all non-federal forces, facilitating the safe return of displaced people, and holding perpetrators of abuses accountable. Other actors within Ethiopia, including the Tigrayan leadership and other groups, must avoid escalation and tensions that risk reigniting the tinderbox in the north. Renewed conflict in Tigray, which would likely involve Eritrea, would be catastrophic: long, drawn out, and deadly.

Likewise, international actors like the United States must re-engage – through verification that the parties to the agreement are meeting its terms, by imposing sanctions on spoilers, and by supporting local reconciliation efforts. The United States can press for political dialogue and link its engagement to security and commercial interests. It also should work with partners who were involved in the diplomatic coalition that was instrumental in mediating the Pretoria Agreement, including the African Union, Kenya, and others. Above all, humanitarian assistance must be scaled up immediately to prevent further human suffering. Donor states must increase funding to the United Nations and other relief agencies and organizations, recognizing that lives are being lost every day that funding is not provided.

The people of Tigray have endured enough. The Pretoria Agreement, while imperfect, is the only path to peace at this moment. A return to war is indeed possible, and would be catastrophic for Tigray and neighboring regions in Ethiopia as well as for the wider Horn of Africa. Without decisive action, Ethiopia risks allowing its most important opportunity for peace to slip away.

The post In Ethiopia, an Unfinished Peace Risks Betraying the People of Tigray and the Broader Region appeared first on Just Security.

The catalog below organizes our coverage into general categories to facilitate access to relevant topics for policymakers, researchers, journalists, scholars, and the public at large. The archive will be updated as new pieces are published.

We welcome readers to use the archive to follow climate change developments and generate new lines of analysis. To search headlines and authors, expand one or all of the topics, as needed, and use CTRL-F on your keyboard to open the search tool. The archive also is available in reverse chronological order at the climate change articles page.

IMAGES (left to right): Natural disaster and its consequences (via Getty Images); In this picture taken on September 28, 2022, an internally displaced flood-affected family sits outside their tent at a makeshift tent camp in Jamshoro district of Sindh province (Photo by Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images; Trees smolder and burn during the Dixie fire near Greenville, California on August 3, 2021. – Numerous fires are raging through the state’s northern forests, as climate change makes wildfire season longer, hotter and more devastating. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

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Notably, another key regional player, Georgia, appeared sidelined by Washington, even though just a year ago, it was the United States’ closest strategic partner in the region. Since then, Georgia’s severe democratic backsliding and the re-emergence of Russian influence in the country has left it on the outside looking in at these new trade deals.

Meanwhile, TRIPP has not been the only U.S. effort to strengthen its position at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. On Nov. 6, President Donald Trump hosted the C5+1 summit with Central Asian states in Washington, expanding American economic, trade, and transit cooperation and advancing the Abraham Accords, the pact intended to normalize relations between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries. In doing so, the United States deepened the Middle East’s ties with Central Asia. Washington is clearly outlining the initial contours of a cross-regional approach that links the South Caucasus with Central Asia and the Middle East and thereby counters its rivals in the neighborhood: China, Iran, and Russia.

Yet, as the United States moves deeper into this complex geopolitical environment, it must prepare for pushback not only from competitors but also from its partners, as South Caucasus countries continue to hedge their bets and pursue foreign policies that further their interests.

Understanding TRIPP

In 1923, the Soviet Union drew the borders of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, placing it within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, even though 94 percent of its population was ethnically Armenian. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Nagorno-Karabakh declared full independence, sparking a decades-long conflict that included two full-scale wars resulting in thousands of casualties. In 2023, Azerbaijani forces rapidly seized Nagorno-Karabakh after 24 hours of fighting and regained the territory. As a result, the majority of ethnic Armenians fled.

Against this tragic background, on Aug. 8, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed the Washington Declaration, facilitated by the United States. The agreement aimed to establish diplomatic relations and advance regional connectivity and cooperation. The core initiative of the deal is a new transit corridor, known as TRIPP, agreed to by both parties, that will connect Azerbaijan’s mainland with its exclave, Nakhchivan, through Armenian territory, which Azerbaijan continues to call the “Zangezur Corridor.”

This breakthrough became possible chiefly because the United States committed itself to the process. Armenia agreed to grant the U.S. exclusive special development rights over TRIPP for 99 years. The United States will, in turn, sublease the land to a consortium responsible for developing rail, oil, gas, and fiber-optic infrastructure, and potentially electricity transmission, along the 27-mile corridor. The idea of a link through Armenia’s southern Syunik province is not new: for years, leaders in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, have sought to connect mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave, Nakhchivan, and further eastward to Turkey. With TRIPP, Turkey emerges as one of the principal beneficiaries, gaining a second land link westward to the Caspian region and Central Asia while bypassing Iran. Turkey is also the most likely partner for the United States to rely on for the management and security of the route.

TRIPP positions the United States as an indirect, soft guarantor of the peace process and economic cooperation. Even though the Washington Declaration is not legally binding and only confirmed terms agreed earlier in the year that still have not been entirely fulfilled, it carries significant political weight as long as Washington remains engaged in the process.

Countering Strategic Rivals

The new South Caucasus “Pax Americana” introduces geopolitical complexity to the region, possibly pushing China, Iran, and Russia closer together and provoking pushback from all three.

The TRIPP agreement has already weakened Moscow’s regional standing and reputation. As the historic successor of the Soviet Union, Russia views the South Caucasus as its backyard. It has maintained influence through military bases in its occupied territories in Georgia and with troops stationed near Gyumri in Armenia. Secondly, for years, Russia led mediation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, co-chaired by France and the United States, but without success. Following the Washington Declaration, Azerbaijan and Armenia jointly requested the OSCE dissolve the Minsk Group, ending Russia’s role mediating their dispute.

Moscow views these developments as linked to its broader standoff with the West. It is equally concerned by the creation of extra transit routes that bypass Russia. It is therefore no coincidence that on Oct. 16, during a telephone conversation about a potential ceasefire in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Armenia and Azerbaijan with Trump. Moscow has minimized its initial public reaction to TRIPP, however, choosing to observe the situation before taking any concrete steps. The Russian Foreign Ministry publicly expressed support for “a zone of stability and prosperity” in the South Caucasus, but sent specific signals to the United States, emphasizing that regional disputes should be resolved by the regional powers  — specifically Turkey, Iran, and Russia — rather than by external players.

Russia retains the ability to destabilize the region, exploiting unresolved local grievances—such as issues related to refugees, property, and cultural heritage—which could undermine the implementation of agreements. Russia could also use its military presence in Armenia to its advantage.

For Washington,  TRIPP also enhances its leverage over China, as the new route can be seamlessly integrated into the Trans-Caspian International Transport Corridor—known as the Middle Corridor—which originates in Southeast Asia and China and extends eastward across Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and continues into Europe. Launched in 2014, this route involves maritime and rail transport. Since Russia’s unjustified attack on Ukraine, the Middle Corridor has emerged as a safer alternative for transit than moving goods through Russia. The Middle Corridor is advancing day by day, responding to the major bottlenecks in the Caspian Sea, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus by improving infrastructure. Between January and June, a total of 9,849 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers were shipped from China and back through Georgia along the Middle Corridor — a remarkable 173 percent increase compared to the same period in 2024, when only 3,608 TEU were transported. As the fastest-growing overland alternative to longer maritime passages and Russia’s northern route (from China through Russia to Europe), the Middle Corridor is a key element of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, meaning U.S. influence over it runs counter to Beijing’s strategic interests.

From Beijing’s perspective, TRIPP agreement is double-edged. China’s logistics and industrial firms could benefit from this new transit route, as it would reduce reliance on traditional maritime chokepoints, and would lower transportation costs. However, given its rivalry with the United States—especially in areas of logistics and technology—China may find itself vulnerable to having to accept higher operational costs under U.S. conditions. Avoiding this outcome could push China to deepen engagement with alternative regional actors such as Georgia, where it previously outmaneuvered the United States by gaining influence over the strategically important deep-sea port of Anaklia.

Meanwhile, Beijing continues fostering cooperation with South Caucasus countries. Oddly, Armenia and Azerbaijan respond to China’s overtures positively, noting China’s important role in Eurasian connectivity and Beijing’s market access and investment. Both countries want to place themselves on the Middle Corridor and other China–Europe trade flows. Unlike energy-rich Azerbaijan, which is able to pursue independent policies with eclectic geopolitical actors, Armenia’s accelerated partnership with China is a bit risky in this transitional moment, as it aspires to leave the Russian orbit, while awaiting TRIPP guarantees from Washington and closer ties with the EU. Consequently, only a month after shaking hands at the White House, leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, led by Xi Jinping. This event was not the first time leaders from Armenia and Azerbaijan sat together in a room while Chinese or Russian leaders endorsed alternative regional and global alignments of the liberal world order — previously they have been spotted at the BRICS summit in Russia. Moreover, Armenia has recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with China; likewise, the other South Caucasus countries.

As for China-Georgia relations, Georgia’s abrupt reorientation toward Russia and authoritarianism, combined with the imposition of Western sanctions, created a strategic vacuum that also affected Tbilisi’s cooperation with Beijing. The strategically important Anaklia Deep Sea Port project, is still unsigned with the Chinese consortium. The uncertainty surrounding the project raises questions about whether Georgia and China may be struggling to finalize the agreement. Once a point of contention between the United States and China, Anaklia now seems to reflect Tbilisi’s hesitation amid ongoing political crises in the wider U.S.-China rivalry. At the same time, as the Georgian government seeks renewed legitimacy from the United States, it might use the Anaklia project as a card to recalibrate its stance toward Washington to restart diplomatic relations. Georgia’s absence from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in August also highlights this possibility and the strain in its relations with Beijing.

Georgia still holds significant potential for the United States thanks to its geostrategic location and connectivity with Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. With access to the Black Sea, it also presents Beijing a possible gateway to the EU through the Middle Corridor. Because of its location, Georgia has been one of the leading recipients of U.S. financial support in Europe and Eurasia, generating value for the country’s economy through enforcing its role in the Middle Corridor. For now, the partnership between Georgia and the United States is suspended as a result of the Georgian government’s anti-U.S. and European rhetoric and actions. There is no U.S. ambassador appointed, and there is little diplomatic pressure coming from Washington. Although the United States could still recruit Tbilisi for its grand plan using sticks and carrots, the current isolation and sanctions are not painful enough for Tbilisi to pressure them to conduct free and transparent elections, free political prisoners, or abolish Russian-style oppressive laws. If it did take these steps, Georgia could perhaps return to the democratic, Euro-Atlantic track.

TRIPP, envisioned as a comprehensive infrastructure initiative encompassing railways, energy pipelines, fiber-optic networks, and the flow of goods, will bypass traditional transit routes not only through Russia but Iran. Iran also sees danger in the U.S. presence, even though American troops will not be deployed along the route. Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs talked about “the negative consequences of any form of foreign intervention, especially near shared borders.” In an August phone call, Armenian leaders sought to reassure Iran, their longtime ally, emphasizing that the agreement benefits the region, preserves Iran’s access to Armenia, maintains Yerevan’s administrative control over its sovereign territory, and includes a pledge not to involve U.S. forces.

TRIPP faces significant hurdles and internal challenges before it delivers lasting peace, but early investments are already being made. Washington intends to grant Armenia $145 million for TRIPP, while Armenia received $500 million in investment from U.S. chip maker NVIDIA to build the region’s most powerful supercomputing hub and data processing center, offsetting Chinese influence through investments in artificial intelligence. The United States also signed a strategic partnership with Azerbaijan in August, lifting its arms embargo and elevating Baku’s status as a regional powerhouse on the Caspian Sea.

Early indicators suggest some progress toward Armenia–Azerbaijan normalization. Baku lifted the transit ban to Yerevan, and the first transit shipment of Kazakh grain is expected to reach Armenia using the Georgian railway. At the same time, Armenia opened its border, allowing Azerbaijani trucks to transit through its territory to Turkey, and each country launched flights through each other’s airspace. So far, the U.S.-facilitated TRIPP agreement is pushing the peace and development process forward.

TRIPP and the Abraham Accords

As mentioned, brokering the TRIPP agreement was not a single, targeted initiative devised by Trump; rather, the South Caucasus has been considered as a strategic bridge connecting the Middle East and Central Asia as part of broader U.S. interests.

On Nov. 6, the United States hosted the C5+1 Summit in Washington, D.C., convening the leaders of the Central Asian States to deepen engagement and expand Washington’s footprint in the region. According to the joint statement, the parties committed to enhancing supply chain connectivity and resilience by fully developing the Trans-Caspian Trade Route (also known as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route) and integrating it with TRIPP in the South Caucasus. These moves aim to secure the movement of cargo, information, and energy, benefiting both the C5+1 countries and the broader international community. The summit further emphasized the pursuit of secure, reliable, and diversified energy supplies, while encouraging expanded investment and trade in energy and critical minerals. Notably, Kazakhstan, the world’s leading uranium producer with an estimated 2.6 million tons of rare earth elements, joined the Abraham Accords, reflecting the Trump administration’s belief that economic cooperation and trade can overpower geopolitical tensions between Israel and the Muslim world.

In the U.S. view, Azerbaijan plays an increasingly important role as a crucial node in energy and transit logistics, both for the Central Asian countries and the Middle East. At a Nov. 16 summit in Tashkent, Central Asian leaders and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that Azerbaijan had been invited to join the regional C5 consultative format, effectively turning it into a C6.

In parallel to this, Washington is pressing Azerbaijan to join the Abraham Accords. Even before TRIPP, Baku was already benefiting from the potential advantages of the Abraham Accords within bilateral cooperation with Israel, including access to advanced military technologies and energy trade with Israel. However, linking Azerbaijani and Israeli ports could connect the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor to the Trans-Caspian International Transit route, creating a commercial crescent that could counter China’s influence in Central Asia and mitigate the power wielded by Iran and Russia. Whether Azerbaijan will sign on to the Abraham Accords is unclear for now. The country typically tries to maintain an independent foreign policy that keeps its options open.

It is worth noting that the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia were present at the Gaza ceasefire deal in Egypt. Their attendance primarily underscored that the Trump administration may be able to address two long-standing regional conflicts in the Middle East and the South Caucasus within a single cross-regional framework. Aware of the changes coming to the region, Putin recently apologized to Azerbaijani leader Aliyev for a Russian air defense system shooting down an Azerbaijani passenger aircraft in December 2024, killing 38 people. Putin knows he needs to reset Russia-Azerbaijani relations to push back against the increasing regional influence of the United States.

Ultimately, Washington’s ability to sustain progress will depend on consistent diplomacy and investment, restoration of its credibility among regional partners, and the creation of tangible economic incentives that demonstrate long-term U.S. commitment. The TRIPP deal may indeed accelerate peace and connectivity, but without a coherent and durable U.S. presence, the geopolitical space it opens could just as easily be reclaimed by Washington’s rivals, especially when the South Caucasus countries are still vulnerable to influence. The coming years will determine whether this cross-regional vision becomes a lasting pillar of U.S. strategy or a missed opportunity in a rapidly changing Eurasian landscape.

The post With New Transit Routes and Investment, the U.S. Aims to Counter China and Russia in the South Caucasus and Central Asia appeared first on Just Security.

This in a country that still tries to position itself as a respected member of the EU and a key proponent of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans. At a recent United Nations Security Council meeting, the Croatian representative said the country “warmly supports” the EU membership aspirations of its neighbor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yet in the same meeting, the diplomat pressed for amendments to Bosnia’s election law to give more power to the hardline ethnonationalist Croat party, the HDZ BiH.

The Croatian government’s normalization of the neo-Nazi far-right is intrinsically linked to its undermining of democracy in post-war Bosnia, a country facing secession threats by a Bosnian Serb leader in its worst political crisis in peacetime, one that has profound security risks, given the ethnonationalist partitionist violence that sparked the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The far-right ideology expressed in July’s concert in Croatia and the sentiment reflected in subsequent Nazi graffiti there that went un-condemned by the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) political party were the backbone of the Croatian ethnonationalist war of aggression against central and western Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Today’s leader of the HDZ’s sister party in Bosnia, the HDZ BiH, is alleged to have requested Bosniaks from Croat-run concentration camps to use as forced labor when he was general director of the Soko factory in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, an allegation he denies.

Croatia’s normalization of this ideology suggests it may be turning to the dark politics of the past to shape the Western Balkans of today. At the same time, the region has become fertile ground for Russian influence, including the Kremlin’s support of the Bosnian Serb separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, who regularly cooperates with HDZ BiH political figures and endorses their political objectives.

Croatia will be hosting the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) Summit & Business Forum in 2026 on the 10th anniversary of the forum’s founding in its coastal city of Dubrovnik. This will be an opportunity for Zagreb to set agendas on energy and infrastructure in the Western Balkans and potentially whitewash its record of propping up far-right sectarian politics in Bosnia by presenting itself as a bridge-builder between EU and non-EU Western Balkans states.

July’s Concert: Echoes of Croatia’s Fascist Past

To understand the significance of July’s far-right concert, it’s helpful to examine the evolution of fascist and racial ideologies in Croatia since the period of the Second World War. Between 1941 and 1945, a swath of territory encompassing most of modern-day Croatia, all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and some parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia fell under the rule of the nationalist, fascist Ustaše regime. Aligned with the Nazis, the regime was founded on a racial ideology according to which Croats were “authentic white Europeans” and Serbs, Jews, and Roma were selected for extermination. The violent and racial worldview of the regime was embodied in the atrocities committed at the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp, where between 77,000 and 99,000 people were murdered – most of them Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Jasenovac was a unique death camp of the Second World War, in that it was run and managed by the Ustaše independently of the Nazi regime, with little German involvement.

During the period of Tito’s rule in Socialist Yugoslavia — the federation created in 1945 out of the defeat of fascist forces by Tito’s Partisans — the promotion of fascism was strictly prohibited, and the circulation of symbolism relating to the Ustaše regime could lead to prosecution and even imprisonment. When Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s, these prohibitions fell with them, as ethnonationalist strongmen took control of State apparatuses. In Croatia, the then-newly elected president, Franjo Tuđman, and his HDZ party began revising long-held narratives of the fascist Ustaše regime and its atrocities. One of his party’s unfounded claims was that communist Yugoslavia had exaggerated the crimes committed by the Ustaše regime.

It was at this time that Tuđman met with Serbia’s president, Slobodan Milošević, to discuss carving up multiethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina between them. In 1992, the HDZ government in Croatia sponsored a military assault against Western and Central BiH via its Bosnian Croat proxy, the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). The HVO worked together with Croatia’s armed forces to seize territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina for an ethnically homogenous Croat statelet. This brutal military campaign created prison camps that became the first concentration camps on European soil since the Holocaust. The trial of the case The Prosecutor v. Prlić at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) noted that HVO soldiers forced Bosnian Muslim detainees to sing Ustaše songs in order to cover up the screams of their fellow detainees who were being tortured. The HVO had absorbed another Croat paramilitary group, the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS), whose insignia included the World War Two Ustaše slogan, “For the Homeland – Ready” – the same call-and-response that Thompson used with his audience at the rock concert in Zagreb this year. During its assault on Bosnia, the HVO was financed directly from the Croatian government budget as it massacred Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, burned Bosnian Muslims alive in their homes, and ran a complex of concentration camps including Dretelj and Heliodrom.

Thirty years on from these Ustaše-inspired atrocities, the glorification of the ideology’s symbols has returned with the apparent full support of the Croatian administration. The musician Thompson is a veteran of Croatia’s own war of independence from the former Yugoslavia, in which Milošević’s Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) used military force to try to prevent Croatia’s exit from the federation. He has a long history of promoting Ustaše symbolism and attracting far-right audiences that proudly use Nazi salutes, drawing criticism from organizations including the Anti-Defamation League. He has been banned in several European countries, including Switzerland and the Netherlands, for promoting Ustaše symbolism.

Thompson’s concert included a performance of his infamous “Čavoglave Battalion” song, which begins with the lyric “For the homeland – ready!”, the World War Two Ustaše slogan that is synonymous with the Nazi greeting “Sieg Heil.” Despite condemnation of the concert from the EU Commission, the Union’s executive branch, Plenković has doubled down on his appearance there: “I was happy that I was there […] As Prime Minister, it was in my interest to see how preparations for the event were going.”

The EU has the power to freeze funds to member States to enforce compliance with the rule of law. The 2020 conditionality regulation added to its so-called rule of law toolkit established a direct link between respect for the rule of law and access to EU funds. Moreover, it does not need unanimous support among member States to be enacted. The EU has used this instrument to freeze funds to Hungary and Poland, for example. Despite the Croatian government participating in and normalizing pro-Nazi ideological expressions that are illegal under Croatian law, the EU has yet to put such pressure on Plenković’s administration.

Exporting Ethnonationalism to Bosnia and Herzegovina

Even as Croatia has slipped back into nationalism and far-right ideology for years, its ruling HDZ has faced allegations of undermining Bosnia’s sovereignty, including by three former high representatives, a position created to oversee the civilian implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that formally ended the war in Bosnia.

A critical example of this interference is the aftermath of Bosnia’s October 2018 election for its tripartite presidency, which under the constitution drafted as part of the Dayton Accords must be composed of elected representatives of Bosnia’s three major ethnic groups – Bosniaks (Muslims), Croats, and Serbs. (That in itself has been found illegal by the European Court of Human Rights because it disenfranchises voters who don’t identify as part of one of those three groups.) When a moderate Bosnian Croat candidate from a civic-oriented party beat the HDZ BiH candidate for the Croat seat, Croatia’s HDZ joined its sister party in pressing for changes in Bosnia’s election laws that would restore and entrench their dominance. Croatia’s Chargé d’Affaires Hrvoje Curic Hrvatinic pressed his country’s position that only a changed Bosnian electoral system could ensure that Croats could reliably elect “their legitimate representative” to the three-person BiH Presidency. His position implied that only hardline ethnonationalist Croats rather than civic-oriented politicians are fit to represent Bosnian Croat voters, regardless of how they actually vote.

This came to a head during the October 2022 election, when High Representative Christian Schmidt ordered a change to the electoral law to do exactly that — right as ballots were being counted. The changes were widely denounced by civil society, including the Bosnian Advocacy Center, which asserted they constituted “apartheid for Bosniaks [Bosnian Muslims].”  Meanwhile, the Croatian government and its proxy HDZ BiH publicly  framed it a resounding success.

Now, Croatia’s government is once more calling for further electoral law reforms in Bosnia, again for the “benefit of the rights and interests of the Croat people” and Bosnia’s purported “European path.” This follows a meeting between Plenković and HDZ BiH leaders, and comes as the EU considers whether or not to release up to 917 million euros to BiH as part of the Union’s Growth Plan for the Western Balkans.

The underlying objective of the HDZ BiH is the creation of a third “entity” in Bosnia, which under the Dayton Agreement has been divided into a Serb-majority Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat entity known as the Federation. Such calls for partition are in the spirit of recent partitionist attempts by Dodik, the Bosnian Serb separatist leader, who has expressed his support for the HDZ BiH’s calls for a third entity. So when Plenković calls for further electoral “reforms” in neighboring Bosnia, it prompts the question of Croatia’s end goal.

As in the 1990s, Bosnia finds itself again in the crosshairs of a two-pronged attack on its sovereignty – politically for now, but with the risk of an outbreak of violence always present.  As then, Serb and Croat ethnonationalists are attempting to carve BiH into fragments, just through different means. Though the United States recently lifted sanctions against Dodik, EU sanctions remain and his tenure as Republika Srpska leader looks as good as over in the wake of his ban from public office. Meanwhile, Bosnian Croat ethnonationalists have the full weight of EU member State Croatia behind them, while the EU appears to be staying largely silent.

The post Normalizing Far-Right Ideologies in the Western Balkans: Croatia’s Role at Home and Abroad appeared first on Just Security.

U.N. Security Council briefings are not ceremonial. The Council defines the mandate of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), renews sanctions, and shapes engagement with Afghanistan. In a world saturated with crises, the attention of the Security Council is itself a lifeline. It affirms that the erasure of women is not an “internal affair” but a threat to international peace and security.

In my remarks at the U.N., I urged the Security Council to move from expressions of concern to concrete commitments. The situation is no longer in dispute; even the Taliban no longer deny their repression. The question is what the international community will do. The credibility of the U.N. human rights framework depends on whether it can confront one of the world’s most systematic experiments in gender oppression with more than statements of alarm.

With Women Silenced, Afghanistan Faces Precipitous Decline

I studied law in Afghanistan and completed a master’s degree in public international law in the United Kingdom, at a time when Afghan women could still shape their own destinies. I went on to serve with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and later in the Afghan government, including as Deputy Governor of Kabul and as Human Rights Director for the National Directorate of Security (NDS), an independent human rights monitoring body. On August 15, 2021, while in my office, I received a call warning me that the Taliban had entered Kabul. The NDS detention facility where hundreds of Taliban members, Daish (ISIS) and ISIS-K and Al-Qaeda members were detained was in the same building, and as the only woman in the Directorate’s leadership, I was told I could be among the first targets. In that moment, I understood that the Taliban’s return would dismantle decades of progress and erase the fragile freedoms Afghan women had fought to secure.

After the Taliban introduced their ban on girls’ education, a young woman from Kandahar, living under Taliban rule, told me, “By now, I should have completed my master’s degree and become a law professor. Instead, for four long years, I have lived in uncertainty, unable to decide my own future.” Her words captured the trauma of a generation deliberately erased. The denial of education and employment is not a policy failure; it is an architecture of control. The systematic exclusion of half the population from public life constitutes the crime against humanity of gender persecution.

The Taliban’s exclusion of women from economic and social life has crippled Afghanistan’s economy (as shown in World Bank data), intensified food insecurity, and deepened national fragility. Women are not merely victims of this collapse; they are its missing agents of recovery. According to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), restricting women’s employment is projected to reduce Afghanistan’s GDP by up to 5 percent annually. The UNDP Socio-Economic Review 2024 further estimates that women’s exclusion could result in a $920 million loss between 2024 and 2026. The World Bank Gender Data Portal reports that female labor-force participation has fallen to about 5 percent in 2024, compared with nearly 70 percent for men, while GDP per capita declined from $621 in 2020 to US $370 in 2023. Meanwhile, U.N. Women notes that in the average Afghan household, only 0.15 economically active adults per household are women, illustrating the scale of gendered exclusion. These figures show how the Taliban’s gender policies have accelerated economic decline, weakened social resilience, and transformed what began as a humanitarian crisis into an existential threat to regional stability.

Afghanistan’s 29 million people, including more than 6 million women and girls in acute need, cannot survive without aid, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Global Humanitarian Overview 2024. Yet humanitarian principles are eroded by Taliban interference, restrictions on female staff, and diversion of resources, as shown in Human Rights Watch’s February 2024 report. Aid must remain unconditional in purpose, saving lives, but conditional in accountability. Since 2021, humanitarian operations in Afghanistan have faced increasing interference, including restrictions on female staff and diversion of aid to terrorist groups. The Council should reaffirm that assistance must reach people directly, guarantee independent access for U.N. agencies and NGOs, and establish an internationally appointed monitoring body to verify and report diversion. Persistent weaknesses in oversight and risk assessment have made aid operations vulnerable to manipulation, underscoring the need for stronger field monitoring and independent verification.

The resumption of U.S. humanitarian funding to Afghanistan would help reduce irregular migration and refugee flows, curb opium cultivation, and prevent the entrenchment of an economy built on conflict and illicit trade. It would also help deny terrorist groups the safe havens they could otherwise exploit to threaten U.S. and allied security interests. Administration and monitoring costs should remain within the existing aid ceiling to maximize direct support to Afghan civilians. In addition to the human rights accountability mechanism, a body to monitor the equal access of humanitarian aid to women and girls could be mandated by the Security Council and implemented through OCHA or an independent expert panel appointed by the secretary-general. Drawing lessons from monitoring frameworks in Syria (Resolution 2165 (2014)) and Yemen (UNVIM, 2016), Afghanistan’s mechanism should combine independent field verification with sustained political backing to ensure that aid reaches those who need it most. Without accountability, aid risks legitimizing repression. Without aid, millions will die.

UNAMA remains the only institutional bridge between Afghanistan and the world. Its mandate must not merely be renewed, as in Resolution 2777 (2025), but expanded to help find a political solution to the ongoing human rights, humanitarian, and environmental crises. Although the tenure of Roza Otunbayeva as head of UNAMA concluded in September, the Secretary-General has yet to appoint her successor despite the continuing political and human rights emergency.

The Independent Assessment of Afghanistan (2023) called for a structured roadmap to reintegrate Afghanistan through a phased, performance-based process, envisioning reciprocal commitments: measurable progress by the de facto authorities on women’s rights, inclusive governance, counterterrorism, and narcotics control, matched by gradual international normalization. The Doha Process was established to facilitate this engagement, serving as a U.N.-led platform for coordination with the Taliban on economic, humanitarian, and governance issues. However, while it provides space for dialogue, it has not yet produced a framework for accountability or representation. Reintegration must therefore be rooted not in diplomatic symbolism but in verifiable progress aligned with the U.N. Charter and international human rights obligations.

There Must Be a Cost for Continued Repression

All forms of engagement—political, economic, or humanitarian—must be guided by clear, verifiable benchmarks. Progress in areas such as girls’ education and women’s employment depends on decisions only the Taliban can make. The Council should link engagement by U.N. member States to measurable commitments by the Taliban to reopen secondary and tertiary education for girls, restore women’s right to work, and permit unfettered access to U.N. human rights monitors, including the Special Rapporteur.

These are minimal conditions for legitimacy. If the Taliban refuse them, they should not receive eased sanctions or unfrozen assets. The Security Council Sanctions Committee must link travel exemptions and benefits to measurable progress. Recent debates on easing sanctions against the Taliban, such as the Norwegian Refugee Council’s analysis, highlight the dilemma between alleviating civilian suffering and risking normalization of a regime that continues to violate fundamental rights. If the Taliban refuses to meet these benchmarks, the Security Council should expand sanctions on Taliban leaders, reinstate travel bans, and reduce diplomatic engagement, while redirecting all assistance through independent humanitarian and civil society channels that directly reach the Afghan people. No further political engagement should proceed until verifiable progress is made on women’s rights and inclusive governance.

History will remember that while Afghanistan was enduring one of its most difficult trials, neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan, as well as some of its international partners, involuntarily returned millions of Afghans. In 2025 alone, Iran and Pakistan have forced over 2.6 million Afghans to return, exposing them to deprivation, imprisonment, and even killing of former members of the Afghan National Security Forces. Sending back women and girls to Afghanistan subjects them to unimaginable levels of targeted persecution. As recent reporting highlights, even eligible asylum seekers awaiting resettlement under existing international programs have faced uncertainty and forced deportations.

Although the Council cannot legislate national asylum systems, it can and must urge all States to uphold their obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Convention Against Torture. The Council can also request that the Secretary-General report on patterns of forced returns and consider establishing regional humanitarian hubs outside Kabul to ensure aid reaches returnees without passing through politicized or gender-exclusive gatekeepers.

Climate stress compounds every Afghan crisis. Recurrent droughts, flash floods, and glacier melt have devastated harvests and water systems, driving hunger and displacement. Women bear the heaviest burdens, managing households amid scarcity while also facing early marriage and maternal mortality. Decades of conflict have left explosive remnants contaminating soil and water. Following the September earthquake in Kunar and the November earthquake in northern Afghanistan, unexploded ordnance blocked relief teams, while Taliban restrictions on female responders cost lives. The intersection of climate damage, contamination, and gender apartheid remains largely unaddressed by international response.

As I said during my speech at the U.N., the good news is that Security Council member States can play a vital role in addressing these crises, but it is also vital to fund women-led civil society and media organizations, support independent Afghan media via protected trust funds, and broaden resettlement pathways for women human-rights defenders and journalists. These measures would preserve the last fragments of Afghan civil society capable of rebuilding when the opportunity arises.

Finally, a moral note: the decisions made today are not votes on abstract policy: they are votes on human futures. We have been told that the world wants to help and yet will not demand the conditions that would protect the dignity of Afghan women and girls. Help without justice is complicity. Engagement without rights is appeasement. We will accept assistance that saves us, but we will not accept assistance that buries us.

The post Walls of Silence, Crumbling Futures: Why the World Must Act on Afghanistan appeared first on Just Security.

After two years of missiles, hostages, and the catastrophic toll of hunger and mass casualties of civilians in Gaza, Israel’s society is exhausted. After the war and the high political polarization regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Netanyahu’s government’s steps against the rule of law, there is hope that this moment might mark a transitional time from war to post-war, and perhaps even with new paths for peace. What does gender have to do with any of this? While this question may seem academic in the face of hefty geopolitical issues and immense human suffering, it is anything but. Indeed, a gender-based analysis offers a crucial lens, exposing the deep-seated structures of our existing order. Without challenging it, we cannot hope to alter the recurring patterns of our reality.

Too Much Security, Too Narrowly Defined

In Israel, security discourse is predominantly framed by military metrics: casualties, thwarted attacks, strikes on enemy installations, and territorial conquest. When this narrow definition of security is threatened, public discourse shifts to endless streams of military and geopolitical analysis. Yet, a direct and fundamental connection exists between damage to this limited security and harm to broader forms of human security—housing, employment, emotional well-being within families and schools, social welfare, and what might be termed “citizenship security.” Crucially, all these dimensions have a gender-related perspective. Acknowledging the erosion of civilian security as integral to analyzing the consequences, costs, and coping strategies of war is an urgent strategic necessity.

The narrow military fixation obscures the profound cost of undermining the state’s fundamental obligation to its citizens’ prosperity. For example, it allowed the government to deflect attention from the agonizing reality of hostages in Gaza, by asserting that their families must refrain from too loudly protesting, so as not to impede the war’s primary objective: the total elimination of Hamas. The price of the many months of abandoning hostages extended beyond their immediate survival; it inflicted severe damage on Israel’s ethos of solidarity, a cornerstone of public trust in the state. This singular focus also conveniently silenced any meaningful discussion of the devastating toll on Gaza’s civilian population.

The pervasive military security discourse enables direct assaults on citizenship security. While the October 7th massacre and subsequent missile attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran profoundly shattered Israelis’ basic physical safety, an equally devastating injury arises from the erosion of citizen trust. This includes trust in decision-making processes to be objective and transparent and to serve public interests, alongside the ability to freely voice opinions. In contemporary Israel, mirroring trends in the United States, confidence has waned in the integrity of democratic processes and the capacity of institutional gatekeepers to uphold the rule of law against opportunistic governmental power.

The current government’s undermining of Israeli democracy directly correlates with its assault on a critical aspect of security: the assurance a liberal democratic state owes its citizens through an implicit social contract. This is the security of living in a just society where human dignity is preserved and all are equal before the law. Palestinian citizens of Israel have endured these violations for decades. Israeli women, too, have been disproportionately affected by democratic deficiencies since the state’s inception, particularly through the religious establishment’s monopoly over personal status and the pervasive militaristic culture. More recently, these infringements have become increasingly palpable for Jewish citizens, especially those vocalizing dissent against the occupation, the war, the judicial overhaul, religious coercion, or sexism and homophobia.

The Concept of “Life Itself” as a Method for Undermining Fundamental Rights

In 2015, following a State Comptroller’s report on Israel’s housing crisis, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted: “When we talk about housing prices, about the cost of living, I don’t forget for a moment life itself. The greatest challenge to our lives now is Iran’s nuclear armament.” At first glance, the assertion that a leader’s primary duty is to protect “life itself” appears sensible. Yet, if we survive a government that sacrifices our welfare, freedoms, and future to preserve this narrow concept of “life itself,” will that life retain any meaning? If, under the guise of war, an oppressive and discriminatory society takes root, the very essence of our lives will be diminished.

Netanyahu’s rhetoric reverts to a narrow Hobbesian understanding of the ruler’s duty: solely to protect subjects’ lives. This discounts the broader Lockean and Rawlsian concepts of mutual contractual obligations between the state and the citizen. Under these more developed political theories, which have become the bedrock of contemporary democracies, the state is to ensure basic rights such as liberty and property (John Locke), and fairness and dignity (John Rawls). For its exclusive powers to be legitimate (such as sending citizens to war or to jail, or collecting taxes), it must obey the law and respect the checks and balances mechanisms embedded in the governmental structure.

As an expert in gender equality, I’ve grown accustomed to my analyses being relegated to the “lifestyle” sections of news outlets, deemed nice-to-have but non-essential. Countless times, my scheduled appearances were canceled or shortened due to seemingly more urgent political or security-related breaking news. This isn’t a complaint, but an illustration of a deeply misguided perception. The singular focus on “life itself” as the paramount security concern undermines our security as citizens with fundamental rights. The disproportionate price this concept extracts from women is rarely discussed, yet it profoundly erodes societal resilience.

Chauvinism Endangers Lives

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, was a landmark recognition of women’s crucial role in international conflict resolution. This pioneering resolution, which has since spurred extensive research and implementation programs, was grounded not only in principles of gender equality but also in practical efficacy. Experience from conflicts like those in Northern Ireland, Colombia, and Nigeria demonstrates that greater female participation in peace talks significantly increases the longevity of agreements.

In 2005, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, integrated Resolution 1325 into Israeli law, mandating appropriate representation of women from diverse groups in national policy-shaping committees. Yet, successive governments have consistently failed to uphold this obligation. Israel has never included a woman in its war cabinet. Women were notably absent from the Corona cabinet and the committee investigating the events surrounding the 2010 Turkish flotilla to Gaza. Court petitions to include women in such bodies tend to be a game of cat and mouse, in which petitioners are deemed either too early or too late for asking the court to review the matter.

The benefits of gender and sectoral diversity in decision-making extend beyond politics to the business world. In 2020, Goldman Sachs announced it would cease investing in companies lacking women on their boards, citing a direct correlation between female board representation and corporate profits. When women are absent from decision-making centers, vital perspectives are often missed. President Donald Trump’s fierce attack on DEI policies of universities and corporations is telling. Hierarchical societies where one gender, race, or religion is superior to others are part of the autocratic playbook. Israel’s failure to anticipate, despite warnings, Hamas’s atrocious and lethal attack on October 7th tragically underscored this: women’s presence and professionalism alone are insufficient for sound decision-making; their voices must be taken seriously. In the days before the attack, female spotters and an intelligence NCO provided multiple early warnings about suspected preparations on the other side of the border, but these were disregarded systematically and sometimes harshly. This starkly illustrates how chauvinism endangers lives. When women are excluded from critical discussions or viewed because of stereotypes and stigmas against women, girls, and boys alike internalize that women’s voices hold less weight, and that their aspirations and life plans should be limited to their gender.

Wars have Core Gendered Dimensions—It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature

Resolution 1325 also crucially called for recognizing the distinct ways wars harm women. It paved the way for acknowledging systematic rape of enemy women—as seen in Kosovo, Rwanda, and on October 7th—not as incidental damage, but as a deliberate war strategy. This recognition spurred the development of legal mechanisms to prosecute rape as a war crime, which had previously been overlooked or minimized because, like many women’s issues, it was considered apolitical, a private crime between individuals.

Gazan women have been disproportionately impacted by the war. Little attention is paid to their heightened risk of sexual and domestic violence in evacuation zones, or the immense emotional, economic, and reproductive toll of conflict. The realities of giving birth under fire, acute shortages of hygienic supplies, raising children without adequate food or medicine, and the wholesale collapse of healthcare and education systems remain largely unaddressed.

Beyond direct conflict, women face additional wartime harms. Reservists’ wives, left to manage households, children, and elderly parents while struggling to maintain livelihoods, receive scant support. The strain on marital and parental relationships from prolonged absences is also overlooked. The Treasury Ministry’s refusal to compensate employees forced to stay home during the campaign against Iran disproportionately affects women. While high-tech and bank employees can often work remotely with supportive employers, essential service workers such as supermarket cashiers—predominantly women—must choose between income loss and leaving children unattended. (Although the Ministry did ultimately agree to compensation after union pressure, women at the time had no way of knowing this would be the outcome.) Leadership’s war calculus omits these profound societal damages, focusing solely on battlefield casualties, missiles, and territory.

Such examples merely scratch the surface of the inherent interconnectedness of gender and war. Internationally, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s allocation of $14 million for clean water taps in refugee camps, marking Resolution 1325’s tenth anniversary, highlights this. While water is a universal need, in many traditional societies, women are responsible for fetching it, exposing women in conflict zones to attacks when they leave their camps. Thus, clean water taps directly save women’s lives. Wars, by definition, have gender dimensions. The damage they inflict on women—to their lives, freedoms, and equality—cannot be dismissed as incidental.

Over a decade of “the campaigns between wars” (euphemistically termed “drizzles”) between Israel and Gaza has exacted visible costs on the local population. As former dean of Sapir College’s law school near the Gaza Strip, I heard countless heartbreaking accounts of children suffering bedwetting, tics, anxiety attacks, and sleep disorders due to frequent bombing and fires caused by weaponized balloons, and emergency runs to shelters. Do these profound injuries, adversely shaping civilians’ lives, register with Israel’s war policymakers, factored into their cost-benefit analyses? The answer, unequivocally, is no.

Public Attention, Narrative, and Ethos

In 2001, as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, I attended legal philosopher Catharine MacKinnon’s renowned “Sex Equality” course. It was during her class that the second building was attacked. The next morning, MacKinnon opened class with a statement she later profoundly conceptualized in an academic article, but that I reconstruct from memory here: “We experienced a terrible attack. Between 2,500 and 3,000 people were murdered. A similar number of women are murdered by their partners annually in the U.S. This too is war: war against women, but it doesn’t receive recognition as such because murder within the family is considered banal, routine, and private.” At the time, even with quite an advanced feminist consciousness, I was outraged, feeling that my admired professor might do damage to the feminist messages. What is the connection between domestic murder and a jihadist attack, I asked myself? Years later, I recognize the immense courage and striking conceptual clarity of her words, delivered so soon after such a devastating event.

Echoing MacKinnon’s observation, prior to October 7th, annual terror-related murder rates in Israel were comparable to those of women murdered by partners or family members. In both contexts, a specific ideology of masculinity—often cloaked in religious devotion—underpins both military (whether state or non-state) and gender-based violence. This same ideology fuels the Netanyahu government’s broader assault on women’s rights: from weakening electronic monitoring for violent partners and resisting Israel’s signing of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, to empowering rabbinical courts in civil matters, promoting gender segregation in academia, and halting legislation of a law against financial violence, where one partner denies information or financial autonomy from the other.

Even initiatives ostensibly for “ultra-Orthodox and religious women” in the Knesset, focusing on preserving fertility or on “family purity,” have denied requests to participate in their events by women’s NGOs and liberal religious activists. Also on the record are incidents of women protesters against the government being strip-searched, as well as incidents of refusals to let women into public shelters during missile attacks because they were used as synagogues during routine times, citing “modesty concerns,” or declaring some shelters as reserved for men only. Israel, then, has eroded equal access to security—a fundamental resource whose availability should not hinge on economic status, worldview, or gender.

Imagine if the state invested even a fraction of its military security resources into protecting against domestic violence. Beyond the budget, consider the impact if just a sliver of the public attention and rhetoric devoted to narrow security were directed toward the security of women murdered in intimate relationships. Securitist discourse profoundly shapes national identity, perpetually reminding us of external threats. This narrative, in turn, legitimizes infringements on civil rights and well-being. Other forms of violence, particularly against women, are relegated to secondary status, despite being no less political than international conflicts.

This perpetual unrest stifles the development of thought and action patterns liberated from the security paradigm. As Virginia Woolf wrote in her 1940 “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” “There are other tables besides officer tables and conference tables.”

Conclusion

Without a fundamental shift in perspective, we remain trapped in the same destructive script. We will know the world is safer for all, including women, when news editors prioritize women’s equality, security, and welfare. We will know that a government conducts war wisely and responsibly when it equally weighs the damage to the home front against battlefield achievements. And we will recognize sincere advocacy for “life itself” when it accounts for the unbearable murder rates within Israel’s Arab communities and the killings of women in their homes, not solely lives lost in combat or to terror attacks, and when it considers harm to civilian infrastructure, to trust and human security.

The post When Sexism Endangers Lives: In Israel, Sidelining Women Comes at the Cost of Security appeared first on Just Security.

Such extrajudicial killings are not an anomaly in a country where approximately 1,000 women are murdered in the name of “honor” every year. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded 405 such cases in 2024 alone, with many more never reported.

The Balochistan killings are not simply another incident in Pakistan’s long record of gender-based violence. They are a test case that exposes the limitations of international law when a State strategically chooses to ignore its treaty obligations. Despite repeated warnings by international monitors about the anti-women practices of the jirgas, the government has maintained a calculated silence. When the video footage of Bano’s killing went viral globally, the government was left with no choice but to condemn the jirga’s actions and make arrests.

But what does this sudden outrage mean when it comes from the very State that legitimized these councils without legal or judicial oversight? Pakistani officials have attended jirga meetings, treating them as legitimate authorities and relying on them for political purposes, an expediency upon which the government is reliant given the significant local support for the jirgas. The current response is not a genuine policy shift, but a politically calculated gesture intended to deflect responsibility.

The question is no longer whether these jirgas violate the law; the Pakistani Supreme Court has confirmed that they do. The real question is whether international law has anything meaningful to offer in holding a State accountable when it refuses to protect its citizens from violence by groups it allows to operate. The Balochistan case should compel the international legal community to confront this reality, and to take action now to ensure that the tools that are available to hold the State to account are utilized.

The Jirga System as a Stress Test for International Law

Jirgas are male-only tribal councils that have operated for centuries in Pakistan’s tribal and rural regions, resolving disputes through local customs. After independence in 1947, Pakistan recognized these councils as culturally legitimate institutions; however, it did not establish any kind of regulatory framework defining their scope, providing for oversight, or otherwise establishing constraints upon them. By preserving jirgas outside the rule of law, the State authorized parallel systems that have subjected women to systemic violence and patriarchal control.

The jirgas’ decisions routinely impose unlawful and inhumane punishments, such as ordering gang rape as retribution, sanctioning , and exchanging girls through vani or swara as compensation for tribal disputes, for instance as reparation for crimes committed by male family members. These are not aberrations but part of a well-documented pattern spanning decades.

After years of public pressure and documented abuses, in 2019, the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared jirgas unconstitutional and incompatible with Pakistan’s international commitments under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (the latter two of which are binding). The Court allowed jirgas to function only as voluntary civil mediation forums, strictly barring them from exercising criminal jurisdiction or coercive authority.

Successive governments have also used these international commitments rhetorically to project Pakistan as a modern, rights-respecting State, even as domestic practices have systematically undermined those obligations.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, these international and constitutional commitments have not translated into meaningful change in practice. Law enforcement remains absent in most jirga-related cases, particularly when women are the victims of violence. Police intervention is rare unless media coverage or public outrage forces it. The ongoing operation of jirgas in clear defiance of constitutional and international prohibitions illustrates the State’s deliberate choice. Women’s safety is routinely sacrificed to preserve political alliances and avoid disruption in peripheral regions.

This persistent non-compliance is not merely a domestic failure. It exposes the structural limitations of international human rights law.

State Responsibility and the Collapse of the Due Diligence Standard   

Pakistan’s continued tolerance of jirgas’ unlawful practices that victimize women is a breach of its binding obligations under CEDAW (ratified on 12 March 1996) and ICCPR (ratified on 23 June 2010). Article 2 of CEDAW obligates States to eliminate discrimination against women without delay. Article 2 specifically calls on States to ensure that “public authorities and institutions act in conformity with this obligation” and to take measures to “modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women.” CEDAW’s treaty body (the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) first clarified in General Recommendation No. 19 that gender-based violence constitutes discrimination under the Convention. General Recommendation No. 35, later expanded this interpretation by introducing a due diligence standard, requiring States to prevent, investigate, prosecute, punish gender-based violence, and provide reparations to victims.. Although the general recommendations of treaty bodies are generally not binding as a matter of international law, they are highly instructive in elucidating the meaning of a treaty. Similarly, the ICCPR requires States to protect the right to life, ensure equality before the law, and provide effective remedies. The treatment of women by jirgas constitutes clear discrimination under CEDAW and violates the ICCPR’s guarantee of equality before the law.

The obligations established by the CEDAW and the ICCPR are binding duties that cannot be evaded by delegating authority to jirgas or tolerating their existence in practice while prohibiting them on paper. Indeed, article 2 of CEDAW explicitly calls on States to modify or abolish customs or practices that constitute discrimination against women, which would include impermissible activities carried out by the jirgas.

International jurisprudence defines due diligence clearly. In Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras (1988), the Inter-American Court held that States bear responsibility when they knew or should have known of private acts of violence and failed to act with the means available to prevent or punish them. Specifically, the Court stated that an illegal act that violates human rights, even if undertaken by a private person, “can lead to international responsibility of the State . . . because of the lack of due diligence to prevent the violation or to respond to it as required by the Convention.” The Court included in its consideration all preventive means, whether legal, administrative, or cultural. In Opuz v. Turkey (2009), the European Court of Human Rights found that continued tolerance of gender-based violence violated obligations under the European Convention. The CEDAW Committee in A.T. v. Hungary (2005) held that failure to intervene despite foreseeable harm breached the State’s duty. Although these findings are not directly binding on Pakistan, they clearly illustrate a consistent and straightforward principle: that due diligence requires proactive prevention, not reactive responses.

However, Pakistan’s conduct falls far short of that standard. Authorities knew about the killing of Bano weeks before it reached public attention, yet they took no official action until the video became impossible to ignore. The subsequent suspension of a deputy superintendent for failing to report the incident confirms this was not a gap in knowledge but an institutional choice to shield perpetrators and the systems that enable them.

The CEDAW committee formally warned the State in 2013, and again in 2020 about jirga-perpetrated violence and inadequate due diligence measures. Additionally, in 2017, the UN Committee Against Torture highlighted how jirgas had imposed violent punishments on women, calling on the State to ensure these parallel mechanisms are not sanctioned by authorities. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and domestic human rights reports have documented these violations for decades. Despite this extensive documentation and repeated warnings, Pakistan continues accommodating jirgas.

The Balochistan case exposes both the State’s deliberate inaction and the international system’s limitations in holding States accountable. Treaty commitments become meaningless when States choose political defiance over legal protection.

Political Expediency Over Protection

Jirgas have maintained customary administrative structure and social control in their respective regions. Their deep-rooted communal authority and unwavering local acceptance make them indispensable allies for modern governance.

Successive Pakistani governments have repeatedly avoided challenging jirga practices, viewing them as strategic partners in maintaining local stability and security. For instance, in April 2025, a Grand Peace Jirga convened in Dera Ismail Khan, attended by tribal elders, religious figures, and the Pakistan Army, publicly declared support for the Army’s counterterrorism efforts. The jirga’s endorsement reflects how jirgas enjoy de facto recognition and continued operational freedom, reinforcing their role in sustaining order in these regions.

Additionally, these tribal and feudal elites serve as electables who dominate key constituencies through wealth, patronage, and coercion. This makes political parties dependent on their electoral power across rural areas of Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, Balochistan, and southern Punjab.

Further, the jirga system has historically enabled the State to delay the costly and administratively complex process of extending formal judicial infrastructure to tribal regions, where jirgas remained the default dispute-resolution mechanism due to the absence of constitutional courts.

Jirgas do not persist by accident; their continued operation reflects a political trade-off that prioritizes strategic convenience over women’s legal protection.

Structural Neglect as State Policy

Pakistan’s complicity also includes its failure to create even the most basic infrastructure to protect women from foreseeable harm. Those threatened by jirgas have nowhere to turn because they have highly limited access to safe shelters, relocation assistance, or witness protection – all services that the government ought to provide.

Additionally, law enforcement continues to rely on family-initiated complaints, even in cases where families are complicit, coerced, or unwilling to act. For the Balochistan incident, Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti himself admitted that no first information report (FIR) was filed, saying: “Not a single person is ready to come forward as a victim in this case or file an FIR.” In Pakistan, an FIR is a formal complaint that triggers the criminal investigation process, and without it, the police have limited authority to investigate or prosecute such cases.

This reflects not legal restraint, but a willful disregard for the State’s international obligations. Under ICCPR and CEDAW, the duty to investigate and prosecute gender-based violence lies squarely with the State, not private individuals. Requiring family complaints in such cases, even where the State has clear information regarding a violation, breaks this standard and systematically denies women protection that the State is arguably obligated to provide them under international law. 

Legislation without Enforcement

Pakistan’s failure to provide preventive infrastructure is mirrored in its legislative approach. The State’s response to gender-based violence is consistently reactive, triggered by public outrage rather than grounded in structural reform. The Anti-Rape (Investigation and Trial) Act (2021) followed the 2020 motorway gang rape; the Zainab Alert Act (2020) followed the rape and murder of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari; and came only after Qandeel Baloch’s murder shocked the nation.

Such reactive laws serve more as diplomatic cover to shield against international scrutiny than as a genuine commitment to structural reforms. In practice, these laws have had little measurable impact, with limited prosecutions, weak monitoring mechanisms, and persistent gaps in victim protection. Women in rural and tribal regions remain exposed to extrajudicial systems that operate beyond the reach of the law, regardless of these legislative acts. Symbolic compliance sustains Pakistan’s international legitimacy while maintaining domestic structures that systematically endanger women.

Public and political opinion on jirgas remains deeply divided. In regions where jirgas operate, surveys show that many people prefer them because they are viewed as faster, cheaper, and more culturally familiar than formal courts. More recent Gallup data indicates that a significant majority of those aware of the system consider jirga decisions fair. This localized acceptance, combined with inconsistent political messaging, reduces societal pressure for reform and contributes to weak enforcement of laws intended to restrict jirgas’ authority. 

Conclusion: From Reactive Condemnation to Proactive Enforcement

The Balochistan case exposes not only Pakistan’s complicity but also the structural limitations of international law when States strategically choose non-compliance. Of course, limited enforcement of international law is not a new problem, nor necessarily a unique one within the wider international legal order. However, these failings present a particularly acute and painful problem in the context of the jirgas, and one that should trigger wider changes. When repeated diplomatic warnings fail, as they have with Pakistan regarding violence perpetrated by jirgas, the international community must deploy stronger enforcement mechanisms. And indeed, there are such mechanisms available to international organizations and States – and they should exercise them now.

The CEDAW Committee should initiate an Article 8 inquiry under the Optional Protocol, as it did for femicides in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, allowing for on-site investigations to document how jirgas operate with State complicity. Given the pattern of systematic violations, the CEDAW Committee could place Pakistan under enhanced follow-up procedures with shortened reporting cycles and specific benchmarks focused exclusively on dismantling jirga authority over criminal matters.

The United Nations Human Rights Council could appoint a Special Rapporteur on parallel justice systems with a mandate to examine how informal tribunals worldwide perpetuate gender-based violence. This would recognize parallel justice as a distinct category of violation requiring specialized monitoring. Additionally, the EU through its GSP+ scheme (the European Union’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences, from which Pakistan derives significant trade benefits) should strengthen enforcement of its human rights conditions. Because a substantial portion of Pakistan’s export revenues depends on GSP+ and a large share of its EU exports benefits from the scheme, stricter enforcement would significantly increase the costs of non-compliance. This, in turn, would place real economic and diplomatic pressure on the State to undertake meaningful reform. At the same time, bilateral donors and the World Bank could implement gender protection conditions on its assistance, linking development aid to measurable progress in dismantling discriminatory justice systems.

When women are walked to their deaths with the world watching, international law must offer more than words. It must deliver protection with power.

The post When Law Fails Women: Jirgas, Gender Violence, and the Collapse of International Accountability appeared first on Just Security.

During a recent conference in Melbourne on the Taliban’s deepening human rights repression, I found myself in conversations about how the past four years passed so quickly.

Those conversations left me with lingering questions about whether people under the Taliban’s rule could have experienced the lapse of the past four years with the same speed. In a stable, developed and Western context, time is compressed between the busy routines of personal and professional lives, marked by regular events, including holidays and work deadlines, as well as major global conflicts and crises. Therefore, it is easy to let Afghanistan and its people recede from individual and collective consciousness.

Yet, I cannot imagine that the people of Afghanistan, particularly women and girls, experienced the past four years as similarly fleeting moments. It is more likely that this period passed at a painfully slower pace for them, as their experience with time was not defined by a sense of agency and progress, but by the systematic dismantling of hope under the crushing weight of the Taliban’s repressive emirate.

While time is broken down into units of years, months and days, and is universally and objectively measured in the same way, humans will not experience it in the same objective manner. It is a subjective perception that is profoundly shaped by humanity’s circumstances and expectations, as well as a sense of agency to shape our individual futures. Studies have shown that people in positions of power perceive they have more available time and, in contrast, with powerlessness comes a reduced sense of control, making it seem as if there is less available time.

Similarly, our emotions affect our experience of the pace of time. Positive emotions associated with the pursuit of goals and even more mundane experiences can shorten the perception of the pace of time. Negative emotions such as fear and uncertainty are more likely to make people perceive the pace of time at a slower rate.

Life Under Repression

Therefore, tyranny and repression can fundamentally alter the perception of time by creating a climate of fear. Since 2021, the Taliban has created an environment in Afghanistan that has rendered the people powerless, taking away the basic freedoms and rights that are essential for maintaining a sense of control and agency over their lives. The Taliban’s so-called “Vice and Virtue” law not only aims to control how people think and express themselves politically, but also dictates their dress, hairstyles and the size of their beards.

Music, art, and other cultural expressions have been obliterated from public and media spaces. In their place, the Taliban conducts public floggings in parks and displays the bodies of individuals extrajudicially killed in city roundabouts. These gruesome, regular spectacles are designed to instill and deepen fear.

The most visceral example of the Taliban’s tyranny is its treatment of women and girls. In what can only be described as gender apartheid, the Taliban’s edicts, policies and practices negatively affect every aspect of the lives of women and girls in the country.

The ban on education for girls beyond the sixth grade has likely changed the pace and perception of time for women and girls. Many of the tens of thousands of girls who found the gates of high schools shut against them in March 2022 would have graduated with degrees from universities this year or in the near future. Similarly, many more who were in primary schools would now be planning to prepare for what had become, under the Republic, a highly competitive national entrance exam for Afghanistan’s expanding higher education.

The Taliban’s systematic gender discrimination has left women and girls with no hope of completing secondary and higher education or pursuing a professional career. Young girls who aspired to become politicians, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and artists before 2021 are now forced to live within the confines of their family homes with no educational or career prospects. As a result, the predictable, hopeful timeline of a young person’s life —progressing through school, university and then pursuing a career — has been obliterated.

Thus, the Taliban has hollowed out time for millions of girls by extinguishing their aspirations and hopes for a future. Confined largely to the domestic sphere, women are cut off from the social interactions, professional activities, and novel experiences that mark and give meaning to the experience of time. In the absence of hope and an agency to learn, grow and aspire, time may feel monotonous, agonizingly slow and dull.

The Taliban’s climate of fear has generated a state of hypervigilance in the wider population. Between 2001 and 2021, the Hazaras, an ethnic community subjected to decades of persecution, found hope under the Western-backed republican government. They are now subjected to systematic oppression and marginalization, including land grabs and mass displacements.

The Taliban has also suppressed free expression and dismantled legal institutions that protected the citizens’ basic rights, giving rise to widespread self-censorship. Afghanistan’s nascent middle class — including journalists, activists, civil servants, and civil society leaders — aspired to grow and push professional and social boundaries under the Republic. For the past four years, they have had to either leave the country or remain with lower ambitions, limiting their expression or changing careers, often falling into total silence and obscurity.

The effects of the Taliban’s political and human rights repression are compounded by a dire humanitarian situation, which has only worsened after devastating earthquake left at least hundreds of people dead in recent days. In 2025, 22.9 million people, or nearly half of the country’s population, need humanitarian assistance to survive, with a third of the population estimated to be facing crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity. Yet, the very aid that is intended to save lives is frequently diverted, manipulated and directed by the Taliban away from those in need to the regime’s supporters. Groups such as the Hazaras, who are excluded from all institutions of power under the Taliban, are also systematically discriminated against in the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Therefore, it is no surprise that Afghanistan was ranked as the unhappiest country in the world in the 2024 World Happiness Report.

The Generational Costs of Lost Time

The slow, agonizing pace of time in Afghanistan is not just an individual experience. The Taliban is imposing a generational cost of lost time on a national scale. In other words, Taliban rule has not just caused a pause in Afghanistan’s progress equivalent to four calendar years; it has wrought a devastating regression across social, economic, and political domains that will cost the country years, if not generations, of lost time.

Women’s education and empowerment play a central role in a nation’s wider social, political and economic recovery from violent conflicts. The Taliban’s gender repression has closed all avenues for any contribution by half of the country’s population to the country’s development and recovery from decades of violence and instability. In 2021, when the Taliban’s gender policy was in its infancy, the United Nations estimated that the annual cost of bans on women’s employment could be as much as $1 billion per year. Since then, the Taliban’s repression of women and girls has only deepened. Thus, it is possible, if not likely, that the economic costs are even greater.

In addition, the Taliban regime is dramatically expanding its network of madrasas, while overhauling the school and university curricula to bring it in line with its rigid and fundamentalist world view. The Taliban’s “Vice and Virtue” policy actively controls not only how students and teachers behave and dress, but also what they teach and learn. The loss of human capital, as many flee the country or are barred from working, has long-term social and developmental costs. The Taliban’s policies are crippling Afghanistan’s already fragile human capital in a way that will take many more years to reverse.

Responding to the persistent humanitarian crisis requires aid for years to come. However, while humanitarian aid may prevent or reduce immediate hunger, it will not solve the country’s intersecting human rights and political crises.

Keeping the Watch

As an insurgent force, the Taliban “ha[d] the time,” a strategic advantage that meant they merely had to wait out the technologically superior U.S. and NATO forces. Despite their far greater resources, the Republic’s international allies were ultimately constrained by the ticking clock of elections and shifting political commitments in their national capitals. Four years since the Taliban took power, a reflection on the experience of time may show how its regime has agonizingly slowed the pace of life for the people of the country and how easily Afghanistan can slip from global awareness.

The devastating impact of the Taliban’s rule will outlast the number of years the group remains in power in Kabul. The harm done also extends beyond Afghanistan’s borders, as the Taliban is exposing a new generation to its extremist and violent ideology, which establishes a model for repressive rule — in violation of international human rights law and the most fundamental norms — for other extremist groups to emulate elsewhere. The group also continues to host and maintain ties with international jihadist groups. An appreciation of the depth and long-term impact of Taliban rule should galvanize, not discourage, a more sustained, long-term and principled engagement with other actors inside the country — efforts that should be centered on the people of Afghanistan and their rights.

In the absence of domestic or international legitimacy, the Taliban relies on repression to hold power. As a de facto regime that is unwilling and unable to transform itself into an inclusive government, one which would be responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people, the Taliban may find the clock is ticking against them.

To leverage time against tyranny, the international community must coordinate and increase sustained diplomatic pressure on the Taliban regime, use sanctions to hold its leaders accountable for human rights abuses, and find creative ways to support education and civil society.

The clock may seem to tick at the same rate for everyone, but its rhythm is felt differently under the weight of tyranny. And the world should not abandon the people of Afghanistan to the Taliban’s draconian rule.

The post The Experience of Time and Tyranny Under the Taliban in Afghanistan appeared first on Just Security.

It is against this increasingly grim backdrop that Afghanistan’s civil society and democratic forces have established a movement to challenge the Taliban’s institutionalized regime of oppression. Even in today’s challenging climate, these activists continue their resistance against the Taliban’s oppressive rule, navigating an unfavorable international environment and a severely restricted civic space inside Afghanistan. Their work not only keeps Afghanistan in the global spotlight but also makes tangible progress in the broader fight for rights protection and the promotion of accountability.

The Age of Impunity

After World War II, international law became the most important safeguard mechanism for nations in constitutional crisis and for citizens living without domestic human rights protection. Now, the optimism that once underpinned a global rights-based order has given way to realpolitik and a transactional approach to international relations.

Afghanistan was an early victim of this shift when, in 2018, the first Trump administration and a few European States entered into secretive direct talks with the Taliban. The murky U.S.-Taliban Doha Deal forged in February 2020 offered unprecedented concessions and legitimacy to an internationally sanctioned violent extremist group, undermining Afghanistan’s nascent constitutional democracy. The disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021, under the Biden administration, guaranteed the Taliban’s military takeover of Afghanistan. Contrary to their promises, the group established a theocratic totalitarian regime of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban government swiftly reversed hard-earned gains in rights and freedoms—especially for women and girls. It suppressed any form of dissent, and it killed or imprisoned any opposition forces, as well as members of the former security forces.

The erosion of international institutions has also enabled the Taliban to abuse human rights and breach international law, tolerated under the guise of “pragmatist” engagement with the group. When the Taliban first returned to power in 2021, European countries halted their deportations of migrants to Afghanistan. But now, with anti-immigrant rhetoric on the rise in Europe, Germany has resumed deportations in breach of the principle of non-refoulement, which requires governments not to return individuals to countries where they face a serious risk to their life. Germany has even allowed Taliban officials to enter the country to facilitate the removal of Afghan migrants. The German government’s decision to grant the Taliban access to Afghanistan’s embassy in Berlin and the consulate in Bonn, ostensibly to provide consular services and expedite deportations of failed asylum seekers, poses a grave risk to those opposed to Taliban rule. That move not only narrows the space available for exiled democratic forces but also endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands whose personal data are stored in these missions and potentially emboldens right-wing leaning governments elsewhere to make similar diplomatic overtures to the Taliban for political gain. Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Greece have already endorsed Germany’s arrangement. This trend is a serious threat not only to human rights but also to governance and accountability. Meanwhile, the Taliban has viewed these deportations as an opportunity to gain a diplomatic foothold in Europe.

The Russian government’s official recognition of the Taliban on July 3 further complicates the international community’s stance. Russia’s decision was likely motivated by a desire to assert its position on the global agenda, especially as the West recognized the new regime in Syria, which unseated Bashar al-Assad, a longstanding Russian ally. Russia’s position could affect matters before the United Nations Security Council, including decisions related to the U.N. Mission in Afghanistan. It is a particularly pivotal moment as the term of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative (SRSG) is ending this year, and finding another consensus candidate may run into a deadlock. There have already been signs of discord. On July 7, during a debate in the U.N. General Assembly, the United States, for the first time, voted against a resolution on Afghanistan that would define the future trajectory of support to Afghanistan, with the nature of engagement with the Taliban being the contentious matter.

The Russian move also complicates the use of recognition as one of the international community’s last bargaining chips with the Taliban. Russia’s decision could encourage other authoritarian governments in the region, such as Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kazakhstan, to follow suit.

A Resistance Making Tangible Progress

Amidst these serious challenges, Afghanistan also witnessed moments of progress, driven above all by the determination and resilience of its civil and democratic forces. Afghanistan’s nascent civil society, which was forced to go underground or convene abroad after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, has refused to give up on the struggle. Afghanistan’s women’s movement, in particular, has demonstrated incredible resilience by “confronting gun-carrying Taliban on the streets, forming networked movements across the country, advocating from seats at the Human Rights Council and U.N. Security Council, and establishing alternative education organizations” to empower the country’s female population. The vocal and powerful “End Gender Apartheid” campaign, which urges U.N. member States to codify the crime of gender apartheid in the Draft Crimes against Humanity Convention, is yet another example. Over the past four horrifying years of Taliban domination, these groups have been trying to shift the narrative from victimhood to one of agency and strength.

Despite trivial support from abroad, and immense obstacles and exclusion, even by the U.N., Afghanistan’s civil and democratic forces have witnessed significant achievements. Chief among those is the issuance of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Taliban leaders in July. The Court found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that two senior Taliban leaders, Haibatullah Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, have committed the crime against humanity of persecution on gender and political grounds. This unprecedented step not only exposed the Taliban’s ongoing gross human rights abuses but also demonstrated that the Court and its member States are willing to take concrete action against them. By placing Taliban leaders on the ICC’s prosecution list, the Court has made it far more difficult for the group to gain international recognition. This setback for the Taliban also created pressure within the group to reform and even seek leadership change.

Another significant development came on June 24, as the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the body in charge of monitoring the translation of the provisions of the Convention into concrete actions, broke new ground with the first treaty body review of Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover. Although treaty bodies are not courts, their expert assessments of State compliance influence national and international discourse and can be persuasive in legal contexts.

This review was presented by the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the U.N. Office in Geneva, a body that stands as the formally recognized representative of Afghanistan, working in the interest of its people, not the Taliban regime. (One of us, Ambassador Andisha, continues to hold the title of Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the U.N. in Geneva.) The CEDAW Committee had invited the Taliban in 2022 to provide a mid-term report on the implementation of the convention. But the regime failed to offer any meaningful contribution other than a mediocre report that stressed the achievements of the regime and claimed the full enjoyment of rights by women within their interpretation of Sharia law. At the request of the Committee, the Permanent Mission prepared the 4th national implementation report, in collaboration with civil society, human rights experts, former officials, women leaders, and ex-members of parliament, which painted a stark picture of the regression of women’s rights since the Taliban takeover.

Unlike the 3rd periodic report presented a year before the Taliban takeover (February 2020) that documented gradual women’s rights progress in Afghanistan under a democratic government, this review highlighted how two decades of progress were undone by the Taliban’s extremist ideas and authoritarian rule in less than four years—a warning that what happened in Afghanistan could occur elsewhere too, as asserted by prominent human rights experts such as Richard Bennett and Karima Bennoune.

Nevertheless, the result of this extraordinary review has provided a credible and authoritative account of institutional regression in violation of CEDAW articles, findings which are helpful for justice and accountability in front of other mechanisms such as the ICC and the International Court of Justice. The review could also have a possible ripple effect of encouraging other treaty bodies to address the human rights situation in Afghanistan.

Moreover, the presentation of the CEDAW report, an international treaty obligation of sovereign States by the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan and the democratic and civil society members, serves as a signal to the Taliban: refusal to acknowledge and fulfill Afghanistan’s international obligations, including its human rights obligations, makes the Taliban regime even less worthy of international legitimacy. The fact that exiled diplomatic missions and democratic forces can still represent Afghanistan on the world stage underlines that the Taliban are not the only stakeholders within the internationally recognized state of Afghanistan.

International Accountability and Hope

As 2025 progresses, there is still hope for even more progress. The upcoming 60th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) in September in Geneva presents an opportunity to establish a long-overdue independent investigative mechanism that is commensurate with the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan. Such a body would be capable of building cases and establishing individual criminal responsibility. The European Union must heed the continued calls from Afghan and international human rights organizations and propose this initiative, and the HRC members should support it with consensus. Anything short of that risks perpetuating the cycle of impunity and should be considered complicity.

The potential U.S. Senate confirmation of Mike Waltz, an anti-Taliban Afghanistan war veteran, as the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N., combined with Russia’s official recognition of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, could mean the upcoming U.N. Security Council and General Assembly meetings will see more substantial debates over Afghanistan’s future.

Afghanistan’s civil and democratic forces in exile prove that resistance is not only possible but impactful, even in a world seemingly indifferent to their cause, even when the civic space inside the country is closed and international space is narrowing. They are using every existing opportunity inside Afghanistan to raise their voice, even as the already meager international funding for democracy and human rights is diverted or cut. Through the organization of regular protests, active participation in every U.N. and international event on Afghanistan, and writing and research, Afghanistan’s democratic forces are countering the creeping normalization of human rights breaches and misogyny.

Through human rights advocacy, documentation of atrocities, and representing democratic aspirations of the silenced majority under the Taliban’s repressive rule at international and regional forums, the ongoing struggle of Afghanistan’s exiled democratic movement is a vital bulwark against the tide of authoritarianism and extremist jihadi forces.

Their progress, made in the face of adversity, should be an inspiration for all those fighting for rights and dignity around the globe. Today, it is the women and girls of Afghanistan who face systemic discrimination and deprivation; tomorrow, it could be somewhere else. Afghanistan’s civil society and democratic forces have proven their resilience; they need not sympathy but action, courage, and partnership.

The post What the Erosion of the International System Means for Afghanistan appeared first on Just Security.