Gender Apartheid
The brutal practice of racial separation in South Africa implemented by a white authoritarian government forced people of color into cruel conditions of work, housing, and education, and to a lack of access to health care and adequate and health-giving food and nutrition. This practice, known as apartheid, became codified as an international crime in the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which defined apartheid as a universal crime against humanity.
In 1998, states adopted the Rome Statute, the global treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. The Rome Statute includes apartheid as a crime against humanity, defined as “inhumane acts…committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
A year later, in 1999, Abdelfattah Amor, then the UN special rapporteur on the elimination of intolerance and all forms of discrimination based on religion or belief, wrote, “The Taliban has introduced…a system of apartheid in respect of women.”
The situation for women in Afghanistan had become, and continues to be, almost unlivable. Women have no rights, no liberty, and no freedom; their social, political, and physical autonomy have been completely erased. They are absent from the public square, everywhere: from school beyond grade 6, from workplaces, from common space such as parks and restaurants, from any independent travel, from almost all aspects of life. Directives banned women’s voices from being heard in public, ordered women not to sing, and commanded the removal of windows through which women, imprisoned in their homes, might see the outside world (Barr, Human Rights Watch, 9-2-2025).
Although apartheid was originally defined in racial terms, it is now being applied to exclusionary practices based on gender. There are various strategies to recognize gender apartheid as a crime under international law (cf. Barr).
- As countries in the world move towards international codification of crimes against humanity, ‘gender apartheid’ may become included as a mechanism within that global crime. To date, more than a dozen states support inclusion.
- Gender persecution and related crimes can be brought forward at the International Criminal Court and civil cases can be tried at the International Court of Justice.
- A UN-mandated mechanism can be established to collect and preserve evidence of these crimes committed in Afghanistan.
We hope that the criminalization of gender apartheid, as well as addressing gender apartheid as a civil crime, will advance on each of these fronts. Women’s safety, security, and equality are compromised not only in Afghanistan but throughout the world. The time is now to prevent and punish gender apartheid. THE TIME IS ALWAYS NOW.
Ellen J. Kennedy, Ph.D., March 2026.