In the latest in a series of decrees, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have banned women from hearing other women’s voices. The Telegraph reported that the minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Khalid Hanafi, said: “Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear.”
This draconian move comes just months after the Taliban instigated the widely-condemned Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which banned women speaking or showing their bare faces in public. The UN Special Representative of the Secretary General and the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Roza Otunbayeva, at the time said that the law extended “the already intolerable restrictions on the rights of Afghan women and girls, with even the sound of a female voice outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.” The Taliban have issued a number of similar decrees, all designed to erode the rights of women in the country.
Since the Taliban took control of the country in 2021, women have experienced a severe and sustained removal of rights. This continuing erosion of women’s freedoms in Afghanistan has led to assertions that the country is in a “state of gender apartheid.” While many will know the concept of racial apartheid, the term “gender apartheid” may be less familiar. This article will explore what is meant by the term, what practices constitute gender apartheid and and how current legal frameworks address this form of discrimination.
“They [the Taliban] are waging an all-out war against us, and we have no one in the world to hear our voices,” a former civil servant in Afghanistan, speaking to The Telegraph.
What is gender apartheid?
Apartheid is described, under Article II of the of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, as:
“inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”
The notion of gender apartheid was first posited during the Taliban rule of the 1990s in Afghanistan. At that time, women were “forbidden to attend school or work,” could be “shot for leaving the house without a male relative” and were forced to wear the burqa. Like racial apartheid, gender apartheid is the systematic oppression of women, where their rights are infringed and they are segregated and excluded from participation in society, solely on the basis of gender. As Baroness Helena Kennedy wrote in a recent report:
“Afghan women are not only treated as inferior citizens but are actively denied full participation in society. They lack fundamental rights such as freedom of association, speech and movement. They are excluded from the legal system, denied access to positions of power and restricted in their ability to work outside their homes. Education is also systematically withheld from them.”
As well as Afghanistan, it has been claimed that Iran is also practising gender apartheid, where women are facing discrimination and being excluded from public life, affecting their access to jobs, education and healthcare services. The Former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran Javaid Rehman, said in 2023:
“women and girls are subjected to gender-based apartheid, targeting and discrimination, while ethnic minorities face institutional discrimination and persecution, having been excluded from all platforms for democratic dialogue or reform,” and as can be seen by this statement, there are very little differences between the situation of women in Iran and Afghanistan. However, gender apartheid differs from persecution and discrimination due to its systemic nature, “where laws are specifically crafted to constrain the lives of women and their advancement in society.” It has been argued that this systematic, state-sponsored oppression can “only be described as the crime of apartheid.” as IBAHRI Director, Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws LT KC argues in The Gender Apartheid Inquiry report.
Recognition in international law
The concept of “gender apartheid” in international law is an emerging area, lacking direct recognition unlike racial apartheid, which is outlawed as a crime against humanity. Existing frameworks like the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) offer protections against gender discrimination but do not define gender apartheid as a distinct crime. To formally recognize gender apartheid, international law requires significant advancements, including establishing a clear definition, gaining global consensus and political will, and developing enforcement mechanisms. Raising awareness and advocacy in international forums, encouraging legal scholarship, and integrating gender apartheid into existing human rights frameworks could help lay the groundwork for its recognition, reinforcing global commitments to gender equality and justice.
Calls for change
There have been calls for many years for a recognition of gender apartheid in international law. The campaign End Gender Apartheid has called on the United Nations to acknowledge gender apartheid as a crime. They have asked for the definition of apartheid under international law to be “interpreted to include gender hierarchies, not just racial hierarchies.” In a letter Iranian activist, Narges Mohammadi, stated that governments, specifically in Afghanistan and Iran, have “perpetrated…crimes against women based on their gender and sex” through “anti-women policies in political, economic, social, cultural, and educational domains, as well as its discriminatory laws.” She called on the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, to “declare gender and sex apartheid as a crime against humanity in international legal documents.” Similarly, Amnesty International has pushed for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime under international law. Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, said that they were calling for this change to international law “to fill a major gap in our global legal framework. No one should ever be permitted to violate, segregate, silence or exclude people because of their gender.”
A number of UN experts have strongly advised that gender apartheid should be included in Article 2 of the draft articles on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. This call was echoed more recently, in October 2024, when Laura Nyirinkindi, Chair of the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, said that the Taliban’s policies “constitute an institutionalised framework of apartheid based on gender and merit an unequivocal response…The realisation of substantive gender equality cannot be further delayed.”
The proposed inclusion of gender apartheid within the crimes against humanity treaty represents a crucial step in bridging accountability gaps and providing victims with justice. As international deliberations continue, the Sixth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly provides a fertile ground for these discussions. As the primary legal forum within the UN, the Sixth Committee facilitates dialogue on international legal matters, making it well-suited to spearhead the integration of gender apartheid into international legislation. The debates within this committee highlight states’ cautious yet progressive openness toward addressing such pressing issues as gender-based oppression, underscoring the evolving recognition of gender crimes since the adoption of the Rome Statute.
The distinction between gender apartheid and gender persecution is crucial. Gender apartheid requires specific intent to maintain a regime of systemic oppression, whereas gender persecution involves severe deprivation based on gender without the necessity for such organizational intent. Recognising both as coexistential yet distinct within international frameworks would allow for comprehensive legal redress.
The ongoing situation in Afghanistan presents a parallel to the racial apartheid once codified due to the analogous regimes of oppression and domination. By codifying gender apartheid under international law, similar to the way race-based apartheid was addressed, the international community can work to dismantle these oppressive systems, providing a path toward justice and equality. The call for change is vital, and the mechanisms of international law must respond to this urgent need for gender justice on a global scale.
There seems to be no doubt that states like Iran and Afghanistan are engaged in gender apartheid. Their systematic restriction of women from public life, their oppressive policies and their wholesale removal of women’s rights have created worlds in which gender-based discrimination is insidious and entrenched. It is time for the international community to recognise that these violations of women’s rights must be codified and prosecuted at the highest level, with no impunity for regimes that commit such crimes.
