How the Taliban’s Rule Is Fueling the Movement to End Gender Apartheid

What conditions do Afghan women face under Taliban rule?

The Taliban’s 2021 return to power brought a slew of new constraints on women and girls that the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan Richard Bennett calls an “unprecedented deterioration of women’s rights.”

Since then, the Taliban have issued more than eighty edicts targeting the twenty million women and girls who make up just short of 50 percent of Afghanistan’s population. Women and girls face draconian restrictions in public life, namely, on education, employment, access to the justice system, and activities and travel outside the home. These include prohibitions on education beyond sixth grade, veiling and dress codes enforceable by the morality police, and bans on leaving the house without a mahram, a male relative chaperone. According to news reports, repressions are only deepening, and the Taliban have resumed the practice of corporal punishment, including stoning, flogging, and execution. 

The Taliban justify these policies as adherence to a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They claim that removing women from public space and society demonstrates the “purity” of the regime under sharia, says Zahra Nader, an Afghan-Canadian journalist who leads the women-led, investigative newsroom Zan Times. “[Taliban leaders] feel if they give a little bit of rights to women, they might be rejected from the broader Taliban movement, which is fundamentalist,” she says.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an intergovernmental organization comprising mostly Muslim-majority countries, and other experts highlight how such restrictions are not explicitly dictated in the Quran; they argue that the Taliban has instituted a regime of gender apartheid that reflects conservative cultural biases justified by an extremist interpretation of Islamic law.

What is gender apartheid?

Gender apartheid refers to the systemic oppression, discrimination, and segregation of a specific group based on gender. Rooted in the Afrikaans word for apart, the term apartheid was first used to define the social system that privileged South Africa’s minority white population and physically separated it from other races from 1948 to 1994. The term gender apartheid arose in academic and advocacy discourse in the 1980s to describe the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran and the Taliban government in Afghanistan at that time. Under conservative, sharia-based laws, both had begun implementing a strict regime of sex segregation.

Gender apartheid has no formal legal definition, but organized efforts to codify the act are gaining momentum as more Afghan women and girls see their rights eroded by another Taliban regime. 

What is being done to address gender apartheid?

Human rights advocates, policymakers, and regional experts have called for the UN to amend the existing legal definition of apartheid to ensure that the oppression of women is both acknowledged for its severity and prosecutable as a crime against humanity. 

The current crime of apartheid, which is limited to race-based context, is a crime against humanity under the 1974 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and under the 2002 Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC). Meanwhile, the Rome Statute has protections against “gender persecution,” but advocates say these fail to capture the scale of domination and repression against women and girls that states commit under apartheid.

Thus, a July 2024 UN Human Rights Council report called for amending the Rome Statute’s definition of apartheid to encompass “inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one gender group over any other gender group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The expanded definition would highlight the systemic and institutionalized nature of gender apartheid and grant the ICC the authority to investigate, prosecute, and hold those accused of violating the statute accountable. 

Additionally, this February, a UN working group of experts called for amending the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity [PDF], a proposed treaty that draws on the Rome Statute for its definition of apartheid. The working group proposes significant provisions that obligate states to prevent and punish crimes against humanity and require extradition or prosecution of alleged offenders. More than sixty UN member states and observers have supported some degree of gender-related amendments to the draft articles, and as of May, ten states have declared full support in codifying gender apartheid through the proposed treaty.

How are concerns about gender apartheid affecting the Taliban's rule?

UN Special Representative for Afghanistan Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva says that the Taliban’s bid to gain international recognition will be “nearly impossible” unless the group lifts its severe gender restrictions. Even though no country has formally recognized the Taliban government, around a dozen countries continue to staff embassies in Afghanistan and accept Taliban diplomats in their capitals.

Since the takeover, the United Nations has convened meetings in Doha, Qatar, to discuss increasing diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan and to address the rights of women in the country. Although initially excluded from the conversation, the Taliban attended the most recent dialogue in June under the agreement that negotiations would not discuss women’s rights, which the Taliban deemed an “internal issue.” The convening instead focused on economic issues and counternarcotics.

Human rights groups lambasted the United Nations for allowing the talks to proceed without participation by Afghan women or civil society groups. Critics such as Nader argue that the UN’s move gave the Taliban reason to hope that they can achieve international recognition of their government without easing their systemic oppression of women and girls.