UN urges world leaders to codify 'gender apartheid' in international law

Afghanistan is the only country in the world with restrictions on female education

Afghan girls attend classes at an Islamic school in Kabul, Afghanistan. EPA

The UN Security Council must help governments that want to legally declare the Taliban's crackdown on women's rights as “gender apartheid”, a top UN official said on Tuesday.

Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, told the Security Council that more than 50 increasingly dire Taliban edicts are being enforced with more severity, including by male family members.

The situation has become so dire that it is exacerbating mental health issues, especially among young women, Ms Bahous said.

“They tell us that they are prisoners living in darkness, confined to their homes without hope or future,” she said.

“We ask you to lend your full support to an intergovernmental process to explicitly codify gender apartheid in international law. The tools the international community has at its disposal were not created to respond to mass, state-sponsored gender oppression.”

Under international law, apartheid is defined as a system of legalised racial segregation that originated in South Africa. But a growing consensus among international experts, officials and activists says apartheid can also apply to gender in cases like that of Afghanistan, where women and girls face systematic discrimination.

“This systematic and planned assault on women’s rights is foundational to the Taliban’s vision of state and society and it must be named, defined and proscribed in our global norms so that we can respond appropriately,” she explained.

The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and work, and banned girls from going to school. Even home-based schooling initiatives by international organisations are regularly shut down by the de facto authorities.

Women banned from university education in Afghanistan – in pictures

Afghanistan is the only country in the world with restrictions on women's education.

“As the percentage of women employed continues to drop, 90 per cent of young women respondents report bad or very bad mental health, and suicide and suicidal ideation is everywhere,” Ms Bahous said.

Roza Otunbayeva, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan, argued that the policies of the de facto authorities that drive the exclusion of women are “unacceptable to the international community”.

The special envoy said that the UN mission in Afghanistan collaborated with UN Women and the International Office for Migration on a report based on more than 500 interviews with Afghan women.

Among the findings, she said, 46 per cent of women were found to oppose any form of international recognition for the Taliban's government, while half emphasised that recognition should be contingent upon measurable improvements in women's rights.

She also welcomed the recent visit of a group of scholars from the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation’s member nations to Afghanistan to focus on girls’ education, women’s rights and the need for inclusive governance.

The scholars stressed that these requirements are “integral to Islamic governance around the world”, she said.

“They are part of a vital conversation between the de facto authorities and the international community helpfully mediated by the Islamic world.”

The UN official noted that there cannot be international legitimacy of Afghanistan’s Taliban without domestic legitimacy.

Afghan women who fled Taliban struggle with life in Pakistan – video

No government has officially recognised the Taliban, and the UN General Assembly's credentials committee has refrained from doing so as well, primarily due to the de facto authorities failing to establish an inclusive government and its decrees and directives infringing on the rights of women.

Naseer Ahmad Faiq, Afghanistan’s Chargé d'Affaires to the UN, noted that dialogue with the Taliban alone has proven futile.

He called for engagement with democratic and progressive political forces as "imperative".

"The international community must play a more prominent role in helping Afghanistan achieve a legitimate government based on the people's will," said Mr Faiq.

The UAE’s ambassador to the UN, Lana Nusseibeh, underscored the need for a transparent path forward regarding the political process and a well-structured approach to engaging with the de facto Taliban authorities once the UN independent assessment is released on November 1.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted in March a resolution, co-sponsored by the UAE and Japan, asking UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres to establish an independent panel to assess the situation and recommend how to combat challenges in the country, including the Taliban's crackdown on women and girls’ rights.

“Mandating the independent assessment last March, our primary aim was to address the existing gap for a coherent international strategy towards the de facto authorities,” explained the UAE ambassador.

“This should include a reckoning with their de facto control over the territory of Afghanistan that doesn't simply lead to a legitimisation of their power by default.

“The Afghan people are not responsible for the behaviour of the Taliban. It is our responsibility to ensure that they do not become victims twice over, first of extremist policies, and then again by our own inaction or disunity.”