Gender Apartheid - Calling It What It Is
Written by Danna Solomon for Sahar Education
On June 25, 2025, over 50 international stakeholders gathered in London for a conference organized by DEFAW - Defenders of Equality, Freedom, and Advancement for Women - to discuss the oppression of women in Afghanistan and what steps the international community can take to meaningfully intervene.
The conference convened panels of experts from around the world to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and its international impact. The continued struggle to reach women in Afghanistan was a dominating theme of the event, with advocates, journalists, researchers, and educators sharing information and stories about continued efforts to create opportunities for girls and women in Afghanistan, especially for education and self-advocacy.
A panel entitled “Amplifying Afghan Women’s Voices: Diplomatic Pathways for Global Participation and Legal Recognition of Gender Apartheid” featured remarks by former Afghan Ambassador to Sri Lanka and current President and Founder of the organization Displaced International, Ashraf Haidari. He stated, “Gender apartheid under the Taliban is not a peripheral issue; it is a core catalyst fueling the largest displacement crisis in our region. When half a society is forcibly silenced, excluded, and endangered, entire families are uprooted.” Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan, delivered a video message, affirming the subjects discussed during the conference and calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to take action against Taliban leaders. Frustration around a lack of recognition from the international community of the severity of the issue, and the lack of substantial progress towards resolution over the past four years, was palpable.
Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai said, “We do not have protection for women and girls. We do not. The right to education, the right to work, the right to public or political participation can simply be taken away from women and girls tomorrow.”
The conference resulted in a joint declaration calling for the international community to come together, empower Afghan women to have a voice in their fight for equal rights, and codify “gender apartheid, as epitomized by the Taliban’s actions in Afghanistan” as a crime against humanity.
UN Committees have raised the alarm time and time again about the severe subjugation and persecution of women in Afghanistan, and last year, over 60% of Afghan women surveyed felt they were being oppressed systematically. Despite this, the international community has not acknowledged the idea of “gender apartheid” as the reality of the situation in Afghanistan, or defined it as a core crime under international law.
On November 30, 1973, the UN General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, otherwise known as “The Apartheid Convention.” This landmark decision in international law criminalized “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,” but similar structural discrimination based on gender is and never has been defined in a formal legal document. Additionally, both the ICC Rome Statute and the Ljubljana Convention on the prosecution of international crimes include persecution based on gender as a crime against humanity, but fail to go so far as to provide legal characterization of the type of systematic repression based on gender as it has existed in Afghanistan since 2021.
Institutionalized and systematic gender oppression is not a direct analog to the crime of apartheid in southern Africa that prompted the 1973 convention in part because that practice, and others like it, resulted in the physical separation of racial populations from each other, literally isolating a racial group. This obviously cannot occur when a gender population is the subject of systematic repression, due to the cohabitation of mixed-gender families. The case has been made, however, by the UN Human Rights Commission, women on the ground in Afghanistan and Afghan women in exile, and countless international governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, that the Taliban’s legislative and cultural removal of Afghan women from public life is so comprehensive that it is indeed designed to create women as a subclass of human being - it constitutes “systematic oppression and domination” in line with the crime of apartheid as it is defined in international criminal law.
Just because an issue is inherently complex does not mean it can justifiably be put on the back burner. Sahar stands with stakeholders at the June 25 conference in amplifying the voices of Afghan women, and calling their oppression what it is - intentional, systematic subjugation that amounts to a crime. As Sahar’s Executive Director, Meetra Alokozay, says, “Silence enables oppression. Naming gender apartheid is not just about legal language—it’s about standing in solidarity with women and girls whose very existence is treated as a threat.”
Defining and criminalizing gender apartheid would not stop the Taliban from persecuting women and girls in Afghanistan, but it would provide a unifying rallying cry for advocates in the international community to hold the Taliban accountable and combat their actions. Meetra says, “Codifying gender apartheid empowers advocates, policymakers, and educators to call out injustice and demand action. It’s an essential tool in the fight for gender equity, and a vital step toward international accountability.” Legally defining gender apartheid would allow for increased sanctions, criminal prosecution, and other forms of international pressure on the Taliban that are specifically connected to the conditions for women and girls in the nation, and could also provide recourse for individuals and families seeking refuge outside of Afghanistan. Although many nations identify Afghan women fleeing oppressive conditions in Afghanistan as refugees, naming and criminalizing the Taliban’s policies would make a stronger case for nations to grant asylum to Afghan women and obligate the international community to act with more unity and force. As Meetra notes, “When systemic oppression is clearly named, it can no longer be ignored, minimized, or excused.”
On July 8, the ICC made the decision to issue arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders to be tried on the grounds of crimes against humanity. Of the warrants, the ICC press release states that court officials “considered that the conduct addressed is ongoing and that public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of these crimes [and accordingly found] that it is in the interests of justice to publicly disclose the existence of these warrants.”
At Sahar, we hope this important step will lead to legal recognition of something those in Afghanistan and working with Afghan women and girls already know - that gender apartheid is a crime equal to those most egregious criminal acts prosecuted on the international stage, and that it is happening in Afghanistan right now.
Meetra says,
“As someone who works with Afghan girls every day, I know that what they’re experiencing is not just discrimination—it’s a systematic erasure of their future. Naming it gender apartheid is the least we can do.”
Want to make a difference for Afghan women?
Call for the codification of Gender Apartheid today. Donate on July 16th during the July Bonus Day matching event to defy the Taliban and support secret schools for Afghan girls.