Opinion : The Taliban’s Oppression of Women is Apartheid. Let’s Call It That.

By Melanne Verveer, Karima Bennoune, and Lina Tori Jan April 1, 2024 at 6:15 a.m. EDT

Afghan women had little to celebrate on International Women’s Day this year. No school. No work. No parks. No travel without a male chaperone. No health care without a female provider. No divorce. No justice.

Afghan women and girls have been largely erased from society as a result of the systematic discrimination by the Taliban since they took control of Afghanistan in 2021. The regime’s policy — unprecedented in its severity — is nothing less than “gender apartheid,” and that’s what we should call it.

“Apartheid,” the Afrikaans word for “apartness” that lay behind the methodical oppression of South Africa’s Black majority, is recognized as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. A growing number of experts — including two former U.N. high commissioners for human rights, Nobel Peace Prize laureates Narges Mohammadi and Malala Yousafzai, and Graca Machel, the widow of Nelson Mandela — are advocating for the recognition of the related term “gender apartheid.”

Like racial apartheid, gender apartheid describes inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing domination of one group over another. The term enables a clearer understanding of the reality facing Afghan women under the Taliban’s unique interpretation of Islamic law, which has been described by U.N. Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett as “the most comprehensive, systematic, and unparalleled assault on the rights of women and girls.” Indeed, he called it “an institutionalized framework of gender apartheid,” a legal framing that we think can help to cajole a more effective and principled international response.

The Taliban’s campaign against women and girls is comprehensive and calculated. Its aim is to destroy women’s agency by targeting rights such as liberty, work and education, and ruthlessly threatening, harassing, arresting and detaining female protesters. In the words of Nayera Kohistani, a former teacher and protester who was arrested and detained by the regime: “The Taliban have criminalized our whole existence.”

This systematic oppression has already produced devastating consequences. Before the Taliban took over, there were 69 female parliamentarians, more than 250 female judges, hundreds of thousands of women-owned businesses, more than 100,000 women in universities and about 2.5 million girls in primary schools. Now, the parliament has been replaced by a Taliban “leadership council,” and women’s courts have been dissolved. Fewer than 7 percent of women participate in the labor force. Only 2 in 10 school-aged girls are in school, and increasingly they are in religious madrassa schools. The previous Ministry for Women’s Affairs building now houses the Taliban’s infamous Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Because of their diminishing educational and economic prospects, women and girls are increasingly forced into early marriage, with families resorting to selling their elementary-school-aged daughters to put food on the table. As many as 9 of every 10 of these child brides will experience gender-based violence, and many will be placed at further risk because of Taliban-imposed obstacles to health-care access. Today in Afghanistan, one woman dies every two hours during childbirth, and birth control has been banned. These conditions exacerbate the grave humanitarian crisis in a country full of war widows.

While no nation has yet officially recognized the legitimacy of the Taliban regime, we have seen some worrisome softening of standards, including by India, China, Russia and Uzbekistan, where the Taliban has been treated as the official representative of Afghanistan during trade or diplomatic talks. In fact, much of the international community increasingly prioritizes engagement with the Taliban, without clear limits to ensure their engagement does not show tolerance for abuses. These countries risk becoming complicit in its persecution of women.

As the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies put it, world diplomats seem to have adopted “the notion that given the right engagement and incentives, the Taliban may decide to respect human rights, including women’s rights. This view is incomprehensible, given the enormous weight of evidence demonstrating the opposite.”

The apartheid framework could fend off any further slide. International law makes ending apartheid an international obligation. Hence, “gender apartheid” can have symbolic as well as legal value, both shaming countries that enable it and eventually facilitating international legal accountability for its perpetrators.

This is why we call on governments to consistently and without delay begin using the term in all discussions that involve Afghanistan, including U.N. debates and resolutions. This means recognizing that gender apartheid, like racial apartheid, is illegal and must be ended, rather than merely a subject for piecemeal constructive engagement.

All U.N. member states should support the codification of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, as U.N. Women Executive Director Sima Bahous has urged. The U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth Committee, its primary forum for discussion of legal issues, is considering a draft convention on prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity in discussionsthat reconvene on April 1.The United States, one of six countries that flagged the issue in comments on the draft, should fully back its inclusion. All governments that claim to care about Afghan women must heed their appeal to recognize that what they are facing is nothing less than apartheid.

U.N. member states should also enforce and expand existing restrictions on individual Taliban leaders, especially those directly involved in gender apartheid policies. The Taliban should not be able to jet-set while denying half of Afghanistan’s population freedom of movement.

Despite the Taliban’s firm resistance to reversing any of its restrictions on women’s rights thus far, at least some of its leadership craves international recognition and legitimacy. The Taliban must not receive either. Thankfully, three separate bids by the Taliban to the U.N. Credentials Committee have been rebuffed. Given the precedent of South Africa’s 1974 exclusion from the U.N. General Assembly, gender apartheid language can help ensure the Taliban continues to be denied a seat while it systematically violates the U.N. Charter.

Let’s be clear. The Taliban’s oppression of women is central to its system of governance and a core part of its philosophy. The Taliban’s repressive practices can be ended only if the international community takes a tough and unified stand to oppose it — a stand that goes beyond mere condemnation and unequivocally refuses to normalize this 21st-century version of apartheid.

This article was originally published by the Washington Post.