Listening in Times of Crisis: Notes from the Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan

In the wake of relentless violence being live-streamed onto our phones for the last two years, the international legal community has been confronted with questions about the relevance and legitimacy of international law: ‘Is international law dead?’ ‘Is it in crisis?’ ‘What is it like to teach international law in times like these?’ ‘Is Gaza becoming the graveyard of international law?’. As a recent survey post on EJIL: Talk! by Philippa Webb and Lydia Kim highlights, scholars are offering competing ways forward to address the ‘crisis’ of international law, ranging from reforming international courts within existing frameworks to fundamentally rethinking the order itself. What I wish to highlight here is how alternative forms of legal practice by civil society actors may also contribute towards ongoing efforts to rethink the legitimacy and relevance of international law. Such actors have been experimenting with practices that both borrow from and challenge the established forms of international law. They deploy international law as a language to construct their own legitimacy in the eyes of affected communities and other state and non-state stakeholders, and, in doing so, possibly lend international law some relevance. In this post, I explore how the Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan (the Tribunal) adds to the conversation about the crisis in international law, not as a symbol of critique and frustration against formal institutions but as a demonstration of enacting legitimacy from below.  

Performing legality 

Historically, peoples’ tribunals have been set up to give the people the role of judges to analyse what was happening in the world. The term peoples’ is a clear challenge to the states’ protagonism in the creation, interpretation, and implementation of international law. The term tribunal stems from the fact that these forums emulate the framework of a court or a tribunal, whereby the facts of the situation are presented within a well-defined legal framework before a select panel of judges—acting as representatives of the people. Therefore, it is not simply a moral or ethical judgment; there is a legal shape and form to it. There has been a rather long tradition of peoples’ tribunals that use the vocabulary of the law to contest its exclusions—from the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam in 1966, to the more recent ones on Iran, Syria, Philippines, and West Papua.  

Such tribunals do not merely imitate the form of international courts; they perform legality. Their authority lies in the act of doing law, in convening, hearing, judging, and naming harm within an established legal vocabulary. As international law scholars have noted (see here and here) legality is produced not only through institutional authority but also through its repetition, in ritualised forms. In this sense, peoples’ tribunals enact legality as a collective performance by communities rather than states.   

The Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan hosted by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Madrid from 8 to 10 October 2025 exemplified this practice.  It was organized largely by four civil society organisations: Rawadari, Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS), and Human Rights Defender Plus (HRD+). They adopted the formal architecture of a tribunal—indictment, prosecutors, witnesses, judges, and calls to the defendants to present their case. The indictment was based on extensive consultations with women and girls, both in and outside Afghanistan. The hearings focused on the gender-based persecution carried out in a coordinated and institutionalised manner by the leaders of the Taliban regime—the de facto government of Afghanistan since August 2021. What makes this and other recent tribunals (see for instance the one on Gaza) noteworthy is that unlike the early peoples’ tribunals, these are not being held because other formal institutions are not actively looking into the matter. In fact, Afghanistan is on the agenda of the ICC, ICJ, and UN Human Rights Council, and a new investigative mechanism was established in early October. This underscores that the Afghan Tribunal performed legality not as a substitute for institutional justice, but as a parallel forum that sought to hold international law to its own promises through collective judgment. 

Decolonial pluralist feminist vision 

What distinguishes the Afghan Tribunal is its feminist, decolonial and pluralist orientation. The process was largely led by women, whether in terms of organisers, prosecutors, or the composition of the panel, which was notably diverse: a significant majority of women (seven to one) from various regions of the world, several of whom had an Islamic background. Of particular interest to the international legal community may be the two panel members who were not lawyers: one, a psychologist with extensive experience working with the ICC and other international institutions; and the other, a journalist with a longstanding record of addressing gender-based violence and human rights violations who has previously served on a similar tribunal investigating attacks against journalists. This composition reflects the Tribunal’s attempt to expand what counts as relevant expertise in times of crisis.  

Following brief introductory remarks from the prosecutors, the Tribunal’s proceedings were centred around the testimonies of women and girls from different regions and ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Only a few agreed to disclose their identities. Many appeared with their faces covered and their voices distorted for the livestream. Others sent written statements from exile or within the country—all fearful for their safety and that of their families. They described the repercussions they had faced for defying the Taliban’s restrictions: organising protests, delivering public speeches, trying to attend work or university, seeking divorce from abusive husbands, or simply walking outside without a male guardian. Their words and presence emphasized that, despite severe constraints, Afghan women continue to act as political agents. This directly challenges the prevalent international portrayal of Afghan women as passive victims awaiting rescue.  

The only expert witness that took the stand was Nur Rofiah, a lecturer in the Methodology of Qur’anic Interpretation in Jakarta, Indonesia. She represented the Indonesian Women Ulama Congress (KUPI). Rather than presenting her arguments within a human rights framework, she offered a gendered reading of Islamic jurisprudence and interpretation that the Taliban uses to legitimise its policies and actions. Her intervention demonstrated that resistance to gender oppression can also come from within religious and cultural traditions (as scholars have shown), and that such perspectives can coexist with, and even enrich, international legal understandings of justice. This plural approach to legal reasoning, where religious and experiential knowledge sit alongside formal legal norms, is itself a feminist practice. 

What was striking, however, was that throughout the hearings—a space so steeped in feminist praxis, solidarity, and scholarship—the word ‘feminism’ was rarely uttered. Yet, its absence only underscored its presence. The Tribunal embodied feminist principles in its method rather than its vocabulary: in who it centred, how authority was shared, and how law was reimagined through a practice of listening. Perhaps this absence was itself was decolonial, reminding us that gender justice need not always speak the language of Western feminism to enact its promise. 

Political, legal and affective significance 

Since the Tribunal sits outside formal institutional structures, its findings will not carry any legal weight per se, and its judgment will not be enforceable. Yet, this does not render it insignificant. According to those behind the initiative, it will have both political and legal resonance, and as the hearings revealed, a profoundly affective one.  

Politically, the Tribunal functions as an act of collective resistance against the growing normalisation of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban by many states. The mere act of convening and declaring (if this is indeed declared by the Panel in December 2025) that the persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan constitutes a crime, challenges the erosion of moral authority in international relations. It centres the voices of Afghan women, not only as the victims and witnesses of an oppressive regime but as agents of change and resistance in the broader geopolitical order.  

Legally, the Tribunal’s findings may contribute to both norm development and accountability. The prosecutors brought an indictment before the panel, prepared with the support of legal professionals and academic experts. This indictment drew on the frameworks of international criminal law and international human rights law. They framed the situation in Taliban as crimes against humanity and used the forum to seek recognition of ‘gender apartheid’—an evolving concept deserving close attention—as an example of ‘other inhumane act’ within the existing framework of the Rome Statute. The arguments supporting this categorisation built on the tradition of using such spaces to advocate for legal innovation. Moreover, the hearings produced a verified evidentiary record, including witness testimonies (both in person and recorded), videos, and documents, which could be used in subsequent formal proceedings before domestic courts exercising universal jurisdiction.  

Regardless of the long-term legal and/or political impact of the Tribunal’s statement, the most powerful aspect of the hearings lay in their affective impact on the victims. The hearings were not dominated by experts in international law or gender-based violence (who occupied a quiet space in the room), but rather the agenda was filled with witnesses taking the stand. On the first day of the hearings, a nervous witness confided, ‘I am not sure why I am sharing my story here, or whether I should do it or not’. By the end of day three, the same witness returned tearfully and said, ‘I am very happy’. Given how harrowing her testimony and those of the other witnesses were, ‘happy’ was not a word one expected to hear in that room. As millions watched the proceedings live-streamed on their phones and TV screens, almost every witness took the stand and said some version of, ‘I am not just speaking on my own behalf—I am also speaking here on behalf of the millions of other women and girls in Afghanistan’. The Tribunal assured them that they were heard and they mattered, and that theirs was not a lost cause. The number of Afghans who defied internet and social media bans in remote corners of the country to watch these proceedings offers another measure of the significance that the affected community attached to this initiative.  

Constructing legitimacy from below 

The affective dimension reinforces the argument that peoples’ tribunals are more than just symbolic. They lend legitimacy to international law by enabling individuals who are not afforded agency within formal institutions to inhabit its language. For international law scholars, this is not a sentimental point, but a structural one: the credibility of our discipline may increasingly depend on its capacity to listen, not just to adjudicate. In conversations about the future of international law, optimistic forecasts place innovation and adaptation in courts at the centre of renewal; peoples’ tribunals suggest that legitimacy may also emerge beyond courts, in spaces of collective witnessing. In this sense, the Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan not only exemplifies a bottom-up practice of international law, but also reframes the conversation about the so-called ‘crisis’ of international law, challenges the primacy of states, and invites us to rethink how legitimacy is constructed within and through international law.