A Tribunal of Conscience in an Age of Impunity — Ghizal Haress

The following article was published in the March 2026 special issue of the International Review of Contemporary Law, the journal of the IADL, marking International Women’s Day.

A Tribunal of Conscience in an Age of Impunity

Epistemic Justice and the Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan*

• Background

Since August 2021, Afghanistan has witnessed the systematic removal of women and girls from public life. Bans on secondary and higher education, exclusion from most forms of employment, restrictions on mobility, prohibitions on public presence, and the dismantling of access to justice mechanisms together form a coordinated structure of domination. These measures are not isolated acts of discrimination. They constitute a governing design.

In December 2024, four Afghan civil society organizations[1] submitted a request to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT)[2] in Rome, Italy, to establish a Peoples’ Tribunal to hear and address systemic discrimination and human rights violations against women and girls in Afghanistan. The PPT convened its 55th Session on the Women of Afghanistan in Madrid from October 8-10, 2025, following an indictment[3] submitted by a team of four Afghan prosecutors.

The Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan is significant precisely because it does not pretend to replace domestic or international judicial institutions and processes; rather, it fills a recurring accountability gap: situations where violations are severe, ongoing, and well-documented, but formal systems are slow, blocked, politically constrained, or inaccessible to victims.

The tribunal issued its judgment on 15 December 2025, in The Hague, the Netherlands.^[4]  The Tribunal’s judgment contributes to the evolving legal understanding of gender persecution and the emerging concept of gender apartheid. Its judgment confirms that the Taliban’s policies amount to gender persecution as defined under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which recognizes persecution against an identifiable group on gender grounds as a crime against humanity when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.[5] It described Taliban measures as forming the core architecture of governance, rather than incidental policy choices.

The Tribunal concluded that since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have created a deliberate and organised system to remove women and girls from public life. Women have been banned from secondary and higher education, pushed out of most jobs, restricted in their movement, excluded from public spaces, and denied meaningful access to justice and healthcare. These measures are not isolated or accidental. They are part of a coordinated state policy, enforced through official decrees, security forces, and institutions such as the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

The Tribunal determined that this intentional and systematic denial of fundamental rights to women and girls, based solely on their sex and gender, meets the legal definition of gender persecution as a crime against humanity.[6] At the same time, the Tribunal draws attention to the absence of a codified prohibition of apartheid on the basis of gender in international law and calls on the United Nations and its member states to support efforts toward formal recognition of gender apartheid. In doing so, the judgment contributes to ongoing legal and scholarly debates about how systematic and institutionalized gender-based oppression should be conceptualized and addressed within international legal frameworks. [7]

The judgment makes several important contributions to understanding and responding to the situation of women in Afghanistan. While many aspects of the proceedings are significant, this paper examines two key contributions of the Tribunal and its judgment. One, its role as an institution of visibility and epistemic justice that documents Afghan women’s testimonies and restores their authority as credible knowers. Two, its warning against the growing international normalization of the Taliban despite the regime’s systematic oppression of women and girls.

• The Tribunal as an Institution of Visibility and Epistemic Justice

The Tribunal provides a structural analysis of the Taliban’s gender regime while functioning as an institution of visibility and epistemic justice. It creates an authoritative public record of the Taliban’s treatment of women by recognizing women’s testimonies and expert evidence as legal material capable of supporting findings of responsibility. By treating Afghan women not merely as victims but as credible knowers whose testimonies inform legal findings, the Tribunal restores epistemic authority to voices that have been systematically silenced and excluded from public and social life. To better understand this, it is important to examine the theoretical framework of epistemic injustice.

B.1- Epistemic Injustice and the Case of Afghanistan:

Epistemic injustice, as theorized by Miranda Fricker, is a form of injustice done to someone in their capacity as a knower. It can appear as testimonial injustice, not believing someone because of who they are, or hermeneutical injustice, denying people access to the concepts and spaces they need to make sense of and communicate their experiences. [8]

Patriarchy and misogyny generate epistemic injustice by structuring social institutions in ways that systematically devalue women’s knowledge, credibility, and interpretive authority. Patriarchy dictates who is recognized as a credible knower and whose experiences are considered authoritative in defining social norms. To apply Fricker’s theory here, in patriarchal systems, women are often subject to testimonial injustice because their accounts are discounted or treated as less reliable because of gendered prejudice. At the same time, women may experience hermeneutical injustice, where the concepts and interpretive resources necessary to articulate their experiences are absent or marginalized within dominant knowledge frameworks.[9]

Afghanistan has long been shaped by patriarchal social structures and deeply entrenched misogynistic norms that privilege male authority in family, community, and political life.[10] In contexts such as Afghanistan under Taliban rule, these dynamics become institutionalized: women are excluded from education, professional life, and public discourse, while male authorities are positioned as the sole interpreters of social norms.

Under the Taliban, Afghan women face further epistemic injustice. The Taliban exclude women from public life, restrict their mobility, erase their visibility, and deny them education and employment, as the necessary foundation of moral order. [11]  This results in women’s testimonies and expertise not entering formal institutional channels because women are erased from public life, including accessing academic, legal, judicial, and decision‑making roles.[12] Such bans and restrictions on women’s work in academia, public administration, media, NGOs, and many professions structurally devalue their knowledge and prevent it from shaping policy, law, or public discourse.  In practice, male authorities, religious leaders, and Taliban officials become the default “credible” voices, while women’s lived experience of exclusion, deprivation, and violence is systematically discounted.

 

Afghan women are also banned from secondary and higher education, and women are pushed out of universities and research, [13] cutting them off from key epistemic goods like schooling, critical thinking, and scholarly communities. Women are removed from public spaces, professional networks, and civil society platforms where collective knowledge‑making happens, limiting their ability to co‑create concepts and narratives that accurately capture and describe their experiences. In Fricker’s terms, this produces a credibility deficit for women, in that their words are not institutionally trusted, and an intelligibility deficit, in that Afghan women’s interpretations of their situation are not given validity and the weight as their male counterparts.[14]

José Medina’s account of structural epistemic injustice helps us better analyze Taliban’s oppression of Afghan women. Medina argues that injustice is not only political or economic; it also affects who is recognized as a credible knower. In unequal societies, credibility is distributed unevenly. Some groups are granted automatic authority, while others face systematic credibility deficits.[15] Under Taliban rule, women are excluded from education, employment, and public life, but they are also denied recognition as credible knowers and authoritative voices. Their knowledge and testimony about their rights and conditions are dismissed, their participation in public reasoning and public protests is blocked, and institutional spaces where knowledge is produced, such as universities, civil society, courts, and media,  are closed to them.

Such injustices are rooted in broader social systems that shape what is considered believable or even intelligible.[16] The Taliban act as epistemic gatekeepers, designing educational, religious, legal, and political institutions in ways that favor their patriarchal and misogynistic epistemology while suppressing alternative, especially feminist and women-centered, ways of knowing. In doing so, they establish a credibility hierarchy in which the authority to create and interpret knowledge that governs society is systematically vested in men.

The Taliban’s exclusion of women from interpreting religion, culture, and social norms can also be understood as a form of epistemic injustice. Cultural meaning and heritage are not fixed; they are continually shaped through the participation of different social groups in interpreting what traditions mean and how they are transmitted to future generations.[17] When certain groups are excluded from these interpretive processes, a phenomenon known as “participant perspective epistemic injustice” occurs. In this situation, their contributions are disregarded, and they are denied the opportunity to influence shared cultural understanding.[18]

Similar dynamics exist in religious contexts, where epistemic authority is often concentrated in the hands of religious elites, while marginalized groups experience diminished credibility as interpreters of doctrine and moral norms.[19] Gendered biases within religious traditions have historically excluded women from religious discourse and undermined their epistemic standing.[20] In Afghanistan, the Taliban institutionalize such a hierarchy by granting male religious authorities exclusive interpretive authority over Islam and social norms, while women’s knowledge and perspectives are systematically excluded. The Taliban’s own account of governance, as reflected in its submission to CEDAW, exemplifies the epistemic dimension of this injustice. The report frames restrictions on women as protective, religiously mandated, and culturally authentic, asserting that Islamic law inherently safeguards women’s dignity.[21]

Male religious authorities are positioned as the sole interpreters of religion and law, grounded on the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law; and male religious authorities are the exclusive authorities in defining culture and morality, grounded on their patriarchal and misogynistic views, while women are rendered unintelligible and their interpretive authority and capacity to shape cultural and moral norms are denied. This hierarchy is embedded in governance and legal frameworks and enforced through coercive state institutions, applying to both general religious, legal, and cultural issues and those specifically related to women’s rights.

Examples of the Taliban’s institutionalized credibility hierarchy are found in the book “The Islamic Emirate and Its System” by the Taliban Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani and in the endorsement by the Taliban leader Hibatuhhal Akhundzada. In this book, Haqqani explicitly prioritizes religious sciences over modern disciplines and characterizes contemporary knowledge as a threat to weaken the Islamic government.^[22]  This is not just an educational policy; it is epistemic gatekeeping, in which the regime decides what counts as legitimate knowledge, portrays critical thinking and modern disciplines as threats that weaken the state, and rejects alternative sources of knowledge.^[23]

The part of Haqqani’s book on women’s education permits access to learning, but only through multiple layers of control. First, education is structured within male authority and supervision. The husband bears primary responsibility for teaching his wife and giving her permission to seek education outside the home. Second, knowledge itself is mediated through male jurisdiction. The husband is identified as the primary educator, and even the ruler is expected to compel men to teach women. Third, gender segregation governs epistemic interaction. The book prioritizes female teachers for women, permits instruction by a blind male teacher only under specific circumstances, and requires physical barriers if an unrelated male instructor is necessary. [24]

This framing reinforces the idea that women’s education is not an autonomous right but rather a responsibility entrusted to men. As such, women are not recognized as independent epistemic agents. Plus, epistemic exchange itself is tightly regulated. Knowledge transmission is organized around gender hierarchy and moral control. Furthermore, the epistemic hierarchy is preserved. Even when women are allowed to learn, they do not have access to the same educational environments or resources as men, nor are they well-positioned to interpret the law or to become public producers of knowledge.  This structural credibility hierarchy allows men to be authoritative interpreters while women are subordinate learners.

B.2- The Tribunal as a Forum for Epistemic Justice

Epistemic justice refers to fairness in how people are treated as knowers,  that is, in whether their knowledge, testimony, and experiences are taken seriously and given credibility. The Tribunal functions as an avenue of epistemic justice by directly challenging the credibility and intelligibility deficits imposed on Afghan women under Taliban rule. The Taliban deny women recognition as authoritative interpreters of religion, law, culture, and social norms, systematically silencing their voices and excluding them from the institutions through which knowledge about society is produced. The Tribunal disrupts this credibility hierarchy by treating Afghan women not as passive victims or symbolic subjects, but as credible knowers whose testimonies constitute legally and politically relevant knowledge.

Scholars have also noted that peoples’ tribunals can serve as important sites of epistemic justice by creating institutional spaces in which marginalized communities can articulate their own interpretations of injustice.[25] In her study of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Mexico, Rosalba Icaza argues that the tribunal allowed Indigenous communities to present their testimonies and knowledge in ways that challenge dominant state narratives and expose structural forms of violence that remain invisible within official legal forums.[26] By recognizing grassroots knowledge and lived experience as legitimate sources of understanding, the tribunal functioned as a platform through which subaltern voices could contest the epistemic authority of state institutions.[27] In this sense, peoples’ tribunals do not merely document violations; they also intervene in struggles over whose knowledge counts in defining injustice. The Afghan Women’s Tribunal similarly operates as a space in which Afghan women, systematically excluded from institutional and public life under Taliban rule, are recognized as credible knowers whose testimonies help shape legal and political understandings of gender persecution.

Vázquez argues that systems of domination operate through the interaction between material oppression and epistemic discrimination, whereby inequalities in lived conditions are reinforced by inequalities in whose knowledge is recognized and made visible in public discourse.[28] Under Taliban rule, women face material forms of oppression that shape their daily lives, including exclusion from education, employment, and public spaces, restrictions on mobility, and economic marginalization. These conditions are reinforced by epistemic discrimination: women’s testimonies and interpretations of their own circumstances are dismissed, while male religious authorities and Taliban officials are positioned as the legitimate interpreters of religion, culture, and law. Therefore, the more women are excluded from public life and institutions, the easier it becomes to discredit their knowledge and experiences, and the more their voices are dismissed, the easier it becomes to justify policies that sustain their material subordination.

In this sense, the Tribunal is not merely an expressive or symbolic body. It constitutes an institutional site of epistemic repair. By recognizing Afghan women as credible knowers, by validating their interpretive frameworks, and by embedding their testimony within a reasoned legal judgment, it challenges the systemic credibility and intelligibility deficits imposed by the Taliban. The Tribunal thus advances epistemic justice as an indispensable component of any broader project of accountability, universality of rights, and resistance to the normalization of gender persecution.

 

• The Risks of Normalizing Engagement with the Taliban for Women’s Rights

The Tribunal intervenes at a moment when many states are moving toward pragmatic engagement with the Taliban, despite the regime’s systematic repression of women. Diplomatic contacts, technical cooperation, and the gradual expansion of diplomatic representation in Kabul suggest the emergence of a trend in which the Taliban’s institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is no longer treated as a decisive barrier to international legitimacy. Several states have accepted Taliban-appointed envoys, reopened diplomatic channels, or pursued political and economic cooperation, while others are exploring agreements that implicitly treat the Taliban as legitimate governing partners. These developments risk emboldening the regime while diminishing international leverage to demand meaningful change.

More fundamentally, normalization carries profound normative consequences: overlooking institutionalized gender persecution in the course of diplomatic engagement risks undermining the universality of women’s rights and weakening the integrity of international law. By documenting the systematic nature of the Taliban’s policies and confirming that they constitute gender persecution under international law, the Tribunal serves as a critical counterweight to this trend. Its judgment warns that treating such a regime as a normal diplomatic interlocutor risks eroding long-standing international commitments against institutionalized oppression and weakening accountability mechanisms that were created precisely to prevent impunity for crimes against humanity.

Diplomatic engagement that proceeds without centering women’s accounts risks entrenching epistemic injustice at the international level. If states recognize the Taliban as authoritative representatives of Afghan culture and religion while failing to accord equal epistemic standing to Afghan women, they replicate the very credibility deficit that sustains women’s subordination. In contrast, the Tribunal insists that any assessment of Afghanistan’s legal and political order must be grounded in women’s lived realities, not solely in the regime’s self-description.

Under Taliban rule, women face a severe credibility deficit because the Taliban are both the oppressors and the primary source of their exclusion. The regime actively silences women and denies the legitimacy of their voices. In contrast, the international community is not the oppressor. However, in efforts to address the situation, it has not always given Afghan women sufficient credibility or authority as experts on their own circumstances. By failing to fully recognize women’s knowledge and lived experience, international actors may unintentionally reinforce a credibility gap, even as they claim to support them.

A Word of Caution:

The epistemic injustice perpetrated by the Taliban may, at first glance, appear to operate primarily in the realm of knowledge, determining who is recognized as a credible knower and whose interpretations of religion, culture, and law are considered authoritative. However, once such injustice becomes entrenched in social institutions and public consciousness, its consequences extend far beyond the epistemic domain. It reshapes gender roles, constrains women’s autonomy, and redefines women’s rights, responsibilities, and social status. Over time, these dynamics normalize women’s exclusion and subordinate position within society, embedding patriarchal authority into legal, cultural, and religious frameworks. Because these patterns influence how entire generations understand the place of women in society, they are likely to have long-lasting effects. Reversing them would require not only legal change but a fundamental transformation of deeply embedded gendered power relations that structure social life.

• Conclusion:

A tribunal of conscience, such as the Peoples’ Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan, does not possess coercive power, yet its significance lies in its ability to challenge the political and epistemic conditions that allow injustice to persist. In the case of Afghanistan, where Afghan women have been systematically excluded from public life and from the institutions that define law, culture, and social norms, the Tribunal intervenes by recognizing their testimonies as authoritative sources of knowledge about the nature of the regime they face. This intervention is particularly significant at a moment when geopolitical interests are increasingly pushing toward pragmatic engagement with the Taliban. When systems of institutionalized gender oppression risk becoming normalized through diplomatic practice, forums that restore visibility to marginalized voices perform an essential normative function. They help ensure that the interpretation of law, culture, and justice is not monopolized by those who exercise power, but remains open to the knowledge and experiences of those who are most directly affected by it.

Ghizal Haress

Ghizal Haress is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Department of Political Science. She served as a Judge on the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) during its 55th session on the Women of Afghanistan (Madrid, October 8–10, 2025).

Sources cited:

1. A Brief Report about the Situation of Women after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Came into Power, Submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (CEDAW Committee). Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Women, International Affairs and Human Rights, n.d. (on file with author).
2. Abdul Hakim Haqqani. The Islamic Emirate and Its System (Arabic: الامارت الاسلامی و نظامها), (Farsi: امارت اسلامی و نظام آن). Translated by Dr. Mohammad Saleh Musleh. Dar ul-Ulum Sharaih, 2022.
3. “Afghanistan: Four Years on, 2.2 Million Girls Still Banned from School.” August 13, 2025. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/afghanistan-four-years-22-million-girls-still-banned-school.
4. Farhad Hussain. “A Critical Reading of the Taliban’s Misogynistic Manifesto, ‘The Islamic Emirate and Its System.’” Zan Times, September 20, 2023. https://zantimes.com/2023/09/20/a-critical-reading-of-the-talibans-misogynistic-manifesto-the-islamic-emirate-and-its-system/.
5. Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press, 2007.
6. Icaza, Rosalba. “The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunals and Indigenous Peoples’ Struggles in Mexico: Between Coloniality and Epistemic Justice?” In Peoples’ Tribunals and International Law, edited by Andrew Byrnes and Gabrielle Simm. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
7. Judgment, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, 55° Session for the Women of Afghanistan. Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, 2025.
8. Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2, no. 3 (1988).
9. Kidd, Ian James. “Epistemic Injustice and Religion.” In The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, edited by Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus. Routledge, 2017.
10. Medina, José. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2013.
11. Pantazatos, Andreas. “Epistemic Injustice and Cultural Heritage.” In The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, edited by Ian James Kidd, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus. Routledge, 2017.
12. Richard Bennett. Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan. A/HRC/55/80. United Nations – Human Rights Council, 2024.
13. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90 (1998).
14. Sahar Fetrat. “Taliban’s Attack on Girls’ Education Harming Afghanistan’s Future.” Human Rights Watch, September 17, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/17/talibans-attack-girls-education-harming-afghanistans-future.
15. Vázquez, Rolando. “Modernity Coloniality and Visibility: The Politics of Time.” Sociological Research Online 14, no. 4 (2009): 109–15.

 

* This article is an independent scholarly work written by the author based on her previous experience as a judge and her contribution to the judgment of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) during its 55th session on the Women of Afghanistan. While the article references material and themes from the judgment and related PPT documents, it is not an official PPT publication, and any interpretation errors are solely the author’s responsibility.

[1] Rawadari, Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS), and Human Rights Defender Plus (HRD+).

[2] For more details about the work of the tribunal, visit: https://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/?lang=en

[3] The full text of the indictment is available on: https://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/indictment-submitted-to-the-ppt-session-on-women-of-afghanistan/?lang=en

[4] The full text of the judgment is available on: https://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/the-tpp-judgement-on-women-of-afghanistan/?lang=en

[5] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90 (1998).

[6] Judgment, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, 55° Session for the Women of Afghanistan (Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, 2025).

[7] Ibid., 70.

[8] Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford University Press, 2007).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society 2, no. 3 (1988).

[11] See for example, Richard Bennett, Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, A/HRC/55/80 (United Nations – Human Rights Council, 2024).

[12] Ibid.

[13] Sahar Fetrat, “Taliban’s Attack on Girls’ Education Harming Afghanistan’s Future,” Human Rights Watch, September 17, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/17/talibans-attack-girls-education-harming-afghanistans-future. See also, “Afghanistan: Four Years on, 2.2 Million Girls Still Banned from School,” August 13, 2025, https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/afghanistan-four-years-22-million-girls-still-banned-school.

[14] Fricker, Epistemic Injustice.

[15] José Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2013)., 62-67.

[16] Ibid., 67-71.

[17] Andreas Pantazatos, “Epistemic Injustice and Cultural Heritage,” in The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, ed. Ian James Kidd et al. (Routledge, 2017)., 376-78.

[18] Ibid. 376, 381-82.

[19] Ian James Kidd, “Epistemic Injustice and Religion,” in The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice, ed. Ian James Kidd et al. (Routledge, 2017)., 387-88.

[20] Ibid.

[21] A Brief Report about the Situation of Women after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Came into Power, Submitted to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (CEDAW Committee) (Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Women, International Affairs and Human Rights, n.d.), (on file with author).

[22] Farhad Hussain, “A Critical Reading of the Taliban’s Misogynistic Manifesto, ‘The Islamic Emirate and Its System,’” Zan Times, September 20, 2023, https://zantimes.com/2023/09/20/a-critical-reading-of-the-talibans-misogynistic-manifesto-the-islamic-emirate-and-its-system/.

[23] Abdul Hakim Haqqani, The Islamic Emirate and Its System (Arabic: الامارت الاسلامی و نظامها), (Farsi: امارت اسلامی و نظام آن), trans. Dr. Mohammad Saleh Musleh (Dar ul-Ulum Sharaih, 2022). 454-64.

[24] Ibid., 465-80

[25] Rosalba Icaza, “The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunals and Indigenous Peoples’ Struggles in Mexico: Between Coloniality and Epistemic Justice?,” in Peoples’ Tribunals and International Law, ed. Andrew Byrnes and Gabrielle Simm (Cambridge University Press, 2018)., 191-92.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Rolando Vázquez, “Modernity Coloniality and Visibility: The Politics of Time,” Sociological Research Online 14, no. 4 (2009): 109–15., cited in Icaza, “The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunals and Indigenous Peoples’ Struggles in Mexico.”.  Vázquez develops this argument in the context of colonial domination, however, the insight is also relevant to Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

All articles published in the International Review of Contemporary Law reflect only the position of their author and not the position of the journal, nor of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.