By Vrinda Narain
The second anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is fast approaching. Since then, Afghan women have been denied the most basic human rights in what can only be described as gender apartheid.
Only by labelling it as such and making clear the situation in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity can the international community legally fight the systematic discrimination against the country’s women and girls.
Erasing women from the public sphere is central to Taliban ideology. Women’s rights institutions in Afghanistan, notably the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, have been dismantled while the dreaded Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has been resurrected.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has been dissolved and the country’s 2004 constitution repealed, while legislation guaranteeing gender equality has been invalidated.
Today, Afghan women are denied a post-secondary education, they cannot leave the house without a male chaperone, they cannot work, except in health care and some private businesses and they are barred from parks, gyms and beauty salons.
Women targeted
Of the approximately 80 edicts issued by the Taliban, 54 specifically target women, severely restricting their rights and violating Afghanistan’s international obligations and its previous constitutional and domestic laws.
The Taliban appear undeterred, continuing where they left off 20 years ago when they first held power. The results of their ambitions are nearly apocalyptic.
Afghanistan is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. About 19 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity, while more than 90 per cent of Afghans are experiencing some form of food insecurity, with female-headed households and children most impacted.
Gender-based violence has increased exponentially with corresponding impunity for the perpetrators and lack of support for the victims, while ethnic, religious and sexual minorities are suffering intense persecution.
This grim reality underscores the urgent need to address how civil, political, socioeconomic and gender-based harms are interconnected.
International crime
Karima Bennoune, an Algerian-American international law scholar, has advocated recognizing gender apartheid as a crime under international law. Such recognition would stem from states’ international legal commitments to gender equality and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 5 aimed at achieving global gender equality by 2030.
Criminalizing gender apartheid would provide the international community with a powerful legal framework to effectively respond to Taliban abuses. While the UN has already labelled the situation in Afghanistan gender apartheid, the term is not currently recognized under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as being among the worst international crimes.
Presenting his report at the UN Human Rights Council, Richard Bennett — the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan — stated:
“A grave, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid.”
Criminalizing gender apartheid globally would allow the international community to fulfil its obligation to respond effectively and try to eradicate it permanently. It would provide the necessary legal tools to ensure that international commitments to women’s rights in all aspects of life are upheld.
Shaharzad Akbar, head of the Rawadari human rights group and former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, has urged the Human Rights Council to acknowledge the situation in Afghanistan as gender apartheid.
She’s noted that the “Taliban have turned Afghanistan to a mass graveyard of Afghan women and girls’ ambitions, dreams and potential.”
South African support
A number of Afghan women’s rights defenders have also called for the inclusion of gender apartheid in the UN’s Draft Convention on Crimes Against Humanity.
Most remarkably, Bronwen Levy, South Africa’s representative at the Security Council, has urged the international community to “take action against what (Bennett’s) report describes as gender apartheid, much like it did in support of South Africa’s struggle against racial apartheid.”
Elsewhere, the chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, as well as the head of its Delegation for Relations with Afghanistan, have described the “unacceptable” situation in Afghanistan as one of gender apartheid.
Whenever and wherever apartheid systems emerge, it represents a failure of the international community. The situation in Afghanistan must compel it to respond effectively to the persecution of women.
Recognizing Taliban rule as gender apartheid is not only critical for Afghans, it is equally critical for the credibility of the entire UN system. As Afghan human rights activist Zubaida Akbar told the Security Council:
“If you do not defend women’s rights here, you have no credibility to do so anywhere else.”
The Taliban’s brutal two years in power in Afghanistan have taught us that ordinary human rights initiatives, while important, are insufficient for addressing gender apartheid. The world needs resolute collective international action to end the war on women. Not in two months. Not in two years. But now.
Vrinda Narain is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University.
don miller says
Biden knew this would happen when he ran out. He is without excuse. He saw it first hand when Obama ran out out of Iraq to ISIS’ glee. And he saw it as senator when we ran out of Viet Nam. He is just not very bright and didn’t care eno9ugh for gender rights to do it right. Self evident by the results.
JimboXYZ says
Well, since we’re going there, Obama-Biden plan was to eventually leave, Trump was living up to that May 2021 as I recall. Biden waited a couple/few months and when he left 13 Americans and Billions of dollars of equipment was left behind. This obviously was a hot spot in the world that wasn’t quite as important as the Ukraine for Biden-Harris. Just keeping it real.
C’mon man says
Nobody gives a shit about human rights in Afghanistan. We have problems close to home that we need to fix before we start sticking our nose in other areas.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Thank you Joe Biden, more blood on your hands!
Pierre Tristam says
Might have thought of that before the trillion dollars and thousands of lives we wasted and killed there for 20 years, achieving nothing more than the return of a more entrenched Taliban.
Pogo says
@As u$ual
If you don’t know $hit from $hinola, ju$t parrot the talking point$ of the hobbyhor$e you’re riding through your second childhood here in floriduh$tan. E$pecially $tupid and ignorant — con$idering who you (or ewe) elected to replace ron di$aster:
Duh man wit a plan
https://www.google.com/search?q=waltz+metis+made+millions
“Theft is the one unforgivable sin, the one common denominator of all sins. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched then stealing.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
https://www.google.com/search?q=Khaled+Hosseini+The+Kite+Runner
Laurel says
Oh, I knew the small group of Biden haters would jump in with both feet. They forgot that Trump planned to pull out earlier. Convenient. You know, the Republicans are supporting women rights here. Yeppers.
Meanwhile, it shows that Taliban men are definitely scared to death of women. Cowards!
Tony Mack says
No, no — you don’t get away with rewriting history. President Obama was obligated by a peace agreement initiated by President George W. Bush to remove our troops from Iraq. Similarly, President Biden was obligated to adhere to a peace agreement negotiated by Donald Trump to remove our troops from Afghanistan by a date certain. By the way, Trump negotiated to release more than 5,000 Taliban prisoners, one of who now leads that Nation.
As for our withdrawal from Vietnam, that peace agreement was negotiated by Henry Kissinger under the watch of President Nixon.
So to review…three peace agreements negotiated by three Republican Presidents — all falling on the shoulders of three Democratic President who you want to blame for the end result.
Get straight please…and read some history. It helps.
Ban the GOP says
Trump made the first deal ever with a terrorist organization. Biden was supposed to back out of that deal years after it was agreed upon? Mission accomplished oil was removed from being property of the state of Iraq and is now property of exxon and shell corporations. Our fellow americans died not for terrorist or weapons of mass destruction but for the control of oil.
Lance Alred says
I spent nearly 3 years in Afghanistan: Herat, Mazar i Sharif, Kabul, etc. I was there, as a contractor, to oversee off base construction. We oversaw the construction of various projects but, my favorite (by far) was schools for girls.
In Afghanistan, the Soviets destroyed everything when they invaded the country. The historic “Silk Road” was a burgeoning economy before the red army decided to try and steal Afghan resources. Education for kids ceased to exist.
This war plummeted the country into chaos. When the battle fog cleared, the mujahideen then fought a bitter civil struggle for control. Education was an after thought.
When the US came in, initially, the country took a deep breath. Education for kids, once again, became a priority after DECADES of no formal education. I arrived in 2011. One of my first projects was a girls school in the poorest section of Herat, Afghanistan. I met with the village leaders who approved the project. In Afghanistan, the grandfather has to approve whether the girls of the family can be educated. The women leaders, there are these two different factions within each village, also approved. They wanted a new well, as well, for water.
We constructed a 3 story, 22 room school for girls. It was financed by someone from Dubai. The school had two sessions: first session was from 0800-1100. 3,000 girls. Then another session from 1200-1500. Another 3,000 girls attended. The teachers were girls themselves. Usually, it was the older girls, 15-17 years old, teaching. They couldn’t fit all the girls in classrooms, so on the inner walls that surrounded the school, they had painted square sections black to use as rudimentary chalk boards.
I was very proud to oversee this project.
Later, University buildings were approved and constructed through Afghanistan.
The Taliban attempted to intimidate girls from being educated. Battery acid in faces was a favorite punishment and warning to all girls who dared educate themselves.
The vast majority of Afghans are under 35 years old. During my time there, these younger generations, I met, desperately wanted to lead their country and make something of themselves.
We abandoned them.
Pogo says
@Lance Alred
Care to share about this?
“Panel Finds Widespread Waste In Wartime Contracts
August 31, 2011 4:08 PM ET
By Scott Neuman
Waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $60 billion, and the tally could grow, according to a government study released Wednesday.
In its final report to Congress, the nonpartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting said lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and corruption resulted in losses of “at least $31 billion, and possibly as much as $60 billion” out of some $206 billion in total payments to contractors by the end of the current fiscal year.
“Much of the waste, fraud, and abuse revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan stems from trying to do too much, treating contractors as a free resource, and failing to adapt U.S. plans and U.S. agencies’ responsibilities to host-nation cultural, political, and economic settings,” the 240-page report read…”
https://www.npr.org/2011/08/31/140092937/panel-finds-widespread-waste-in-wartime-contracts
Or moreover?
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+waste+and+fraud+in+Iraq+and+Afghanistan+have+cost+U.S.+taxpayer
@Everyone
Live and learn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waving_the_bloody_shirt