Sonia Sotomayor,Clarence Thomas,John Roberts,Samuel Alito,Elena Kagan,Amy Coney Barrett,Neil Gorsuch,Brett Kavanaugh,Ketanji Brown Jackson,Michael Dreeben

Children holding hands

Contributor

The Washington Post

ONE TIME USE FOR OP-CARNEY KIDS 

FEDERALISTGALA

Four Dalmatian Puppy

other

People visit the site of the Nova festival, in Reim

Fake Electors Indictment Arizona

For The Washington Post

Israel Palestinians Campus Protests

US-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-EDUCATION-CONFLICT

**ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR OP-SMITH-HIGHER-ED

Former U.S. President Trump's criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records continues in New York

POOL

Westminster Dog Show

ONE TIME USE ILLUSTRATION FOR OP-RIEVES-HUBRIS

(Chloe Cushman for The Washington Post)

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

A murder plot that cannot be ignored: India must come clean at last

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

The beginner’s illustrated guide to watching an F1 race

Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Southwest passengers now get a $75 voucher for big flight disruptions

Russian state media ramping up English, Spanish presence on TikTok, study finds

Microsoft is changing how you log in to your accounts

Apple is behind in AI and killed its self-driving car project. What’s next?

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Local sports networks go dark mid-game amid dispute with Comcast 

Trevor Williams’s escape act helps Nationals blank Rangers 

How the Nationals helped Mitchell Parker develop into a big leaguer

The 33 best things to do in D.C. this weekend and next week

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

Carolyn Hax: Will request for a postnup offend much younger wife?

Ask Sahaj: Responding to microaggressions is taking a toll on me. Can I stop?

Miss Manners: Offering my bedroom to guests

Election 2024 latest news: Biden holding events in battleground state of North Carolina

Campuses are grappling with the Gaza war. So are our columnists.

Middle East conflict live updates: Hamas says it views talks favorably; Blinken urges group to accept deal

Money goes elsewhere, aid workers flee, Haitians endure on their own

Why the Solomon Islands election matters to China and the U.S.

US President Joe Biden Departure

Ebrahim Noroozi

Melanne Verveer is the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and the former U.S. ambassador at large for global women’s issues. Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M. Simes professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Lina Tori Jan is the Afghanistan policy officer at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

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 <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf" target=_blank>Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court</a>. A growing number of experts — including two former U.N. high commissioners for human rights, Nobel Peace Prize laureates <a href="https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/news/gender-apartheid-must-be-declared-a-crime" target=_blank>Narges Mohammadi</a> and <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/gender-apartheid-is-a-horror-now-the-united-nations-can-make-it-a-crime-against-humanity/" target=_blank>Malala Yousafzai</a>, and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/taliban-repression-of-afghan-women-is-form-of-apartheid/" target=_blank>Graca Machel</a>, 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 <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/09/special-rapporteur-human-rights-council-systematic-and-institutionalised" target=_blank>described</a> 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 <a href="https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/125/67/pdf/g2312567.pdf?token=MqR7HLQHrS6ea0XRPq&fe=true" target=_blank>institutionalized framework</a> 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 <a href="https://kabulnow.com/2024/02/taliban-court-in-kabul-sentences-women-activist-to-two-years-in-prison/" target=_blank>detaining female protesters</a>. In the words of <a href="https://youtu.be/E0ebhadFb1c" target=_blank>Nayera Kohistani</a>, 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<a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/feature-story/2023/08/women-in-afghanistan-from-almost-everywhere-to-almost-nowhere" target="_blank"> 69 female parliamentarians</a>, <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132662" target="_blank">more than 250 female judges</a>, hundreds of thousands of women-owned businesses, more than 100,000 <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/04/taking-terrible-toll-talibans-education-ban" target="_blank">women in universities</a> and about 2.5 million girls in primary schools. Now, the parliament has been replaced by a Taliban “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/23/taliban-government-afghanistan/" target="_blank">leadership council</a>,” and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2023/02/06/the-collapse-of-the-legal-system-in-afghanistan/?sh=258b72b021d3" target="_blank">women’s courts have been dissolved</a>. Fewer than 7 percent of women <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS?locations=AF" target="_blank">participate in the labor force</a>. Only 2 in 10<a href="https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/news/girls-education-afghanistan/#:~:text=Currently,%2080%20percent%20of%20school,economy%20an%20estimated%20$5.4%20billion%20." target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/news/girls-education-afghanistan/#:~:text=Currently,%2080%20percent%20of%20school,economy%20an%20estimated%20$5.4%20billion%20." target="_blank">school-aged girls are in school</a>, 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 <a href="https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/girls-increasingly-risk-child-marriage-afghanistan" target="_blank">forced into early marriage</a>, 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 <a href="https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/91108#:~:text=In%20light%20of%20recent%20events,statistics%20exist%20in%20this%20regard7." target="_blank">experience</a> gender-based violence, and many will be placed at further risk because of Taliban-imposed obstacles to health-care access. Today in Afghanistan, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/12/27/photos-dying-every-two-hours-afghan-women-risk-life-to-give-birth#:~:text=against%20women%20mounting.-,Afghanistan%20is%20among%20the%20worst%20countries%20in%20the%20world%20for,respond%20to%20requests%20for%20comment." target="_blank">one woman dies every two hours</a> 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, <a href="https://dropsafghanistan.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/DROPS-Shadow-Report-A-Response-to-United-Nations-Independent-Assessment-Report-on-Afghanistan-November-2023-1.pdf" target=_blank>much of the international community</a> 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 <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/08/1139757" target=_blank>Sima Bahous has urged</a>. The U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth Committee, its primary forum for discussion of legal issues, is <a href="https://www.un.org/en/ga/sixth/77/cah.shtml" target=_blank>considering a draft</a> convention on prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity in discussions that 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.

Melanne Verveer

Karima Bennoune

Lina Tori Jan

washpost

The Taliban’s oppression of women is ‘gender apartheid’

the-washington-post

Afghanistan Health Aid

Editorials

Columns

Guest opinions

Cartoons

Submit a guest opinion

Today's Opinions newsletter

Opinions

Sign up for the Prompt 2024 newsletter for opinions on the biggest questions in politics

Washington Post Opinions

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by Jonathan Capehart.