RASC News Agency: In a landmark initiative, a coalition of human rights researchers and activists, supported by the Malala Foundation, has launched the Afghanistan Justice Archive, a comprehensive digital repository designed to document systematic human rights violations and widespread repression under Taliban rule. The project aims to preserve evidence that would otherwise be erased by the regime’s deliberate suppression of dissent and historical memory. The archive consolidates a wide range of materials: Taliban-issued decrees and directives, firsthand testimonies of victims, legal analyses, and human rights reports. Its founders emphasize that the archive not only chronicles the regime’s systematic abuses but also serves as a tool for accountability and resistance. “Access to information is itself a form of justice,” they assert, underscoring the principle that documenting oppression is the first step toward redress and societal reckoning.
Meticulously compiled, the archive exposes the full scope of the Taliban’s authoritarian control: gender-based apartheid, the systematic silencing of civil society, arbitrary detentions, and the destruction of democratic institutions. It records the regime’s contested legal legitimacy and provides evidence of the coercive mechanisms employed to enforce compliance. The project’s creators stress that the archive is both a historical record and an urgent practical instrument: “It is a documented witness to what was imposed in the name of law, and a necessary response to the immediate need to preserve these records for justice, accountability, and historical memory.”
Human rights experts highlight the archive’s strategic importance. Beyond preserving historical memory, it forms the basis for international legal action, including complaints to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other global mechanisms that can pursue justice for victims of Taliban repression. Without such documentation, they warn, the risk of historical erasure, impunity, and the perpetuation of violence increases dramatically. In a country where the regime’s power is maintained through fear, propaganda, and intimidation, the absence of verifiable evidence would make it nearly impossible to hold perpetrators accountable or prevent future atrocities.
The Afghanistan Justice Archive is also a direct challenge to the Taliban’s narrative of legitimacy. By exposing decrees, internal directives, and the lived experiences of victims, it undercuts the regime’s claims of governance and portrays its rule for what it is: an authoritarian project sustained through coercion, fear, and the systematic denial of human rights. With this initiative, activists aim to ensure that the voices of Afghanistani victims and witnesses are preserved, creating a lasting record that can inform legal, humanitarian, and policy interventions. In doing so, the archive becomes both a shield for truth and a weapon against tyranny ensuring that future generations inherit not silence, but evidence, accountability, and the potential for justice in a country long shadowed by repression.
