“Gender apartheid”

Taliban Afghanistan & Iran — and a campaign to codify the term

Loose / analogical

Afghan and Iranian jurists and activists launched the “End Gender Apartheid” campaign (2023) to add gender to the crime of apartheid in the forthcoming UN Crimes Against Humanity treaty. The legal debate is precisely whether apartheid, as currently defined (“racial group”), can or should extend to gender.

What happened

On International Women’s Day, a coalition including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi and Afghan and Iranian leaders launched a campaign to codify apartheid to include gender, citing the Taliban’s 150+ restrictions on women and Iran’s compulsory-dress regime. A subsequent legal brief urged states to enumerate gender apartheid in the draft treaty.

Gender apartheid is not merely a theoretical possibility or legal construct, but a real threat and lived reality for millions of women and girls around the world — a reality that is currently not explicitly codified in international law. (UN experts, 2024)

Under each definition

The legal lenses read “no” because both treaties say “racial group”; ordinary usage reads a strong “yes,” backed by a live codification effort.

1973 ConventionMeets the Apartheid Convention?

Not apartheid

The 1973 Convention’s definition is limited to “racial group,” so gender-based oppression falls outside it as written.

Rome StatuteThe ICC crime against humanity?

Not apartheid

Art. 7(2)(h) specifies “one racial group over any other racial group”; gender apartheid is not (yet) an enumerated crime.

SA analogyClose to the South African system?

N/A

The South African analogy is about race; this case is about sex/gender.

Ordinary usageApartheid in the everyday sense?

Apartheid

A widely used, morally serious analogical term to convey systematic, institutionalized segregation of women.

The case that the label applies

Proponents argue the structure of apartheid — an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one group over another, with intent to maintain it — is exactly what the Taliban operate against women; the only barrier is that the drafters wrote “racial,” and law can be updated.

The case against

Both treaties define apartheid by reference to a “racial group,” not sex/gender; the Special Rapporteur himself acknowledges “gender apartheid” is not yet codified, so its use is aspirational/analogical. The Taliban rejects the label entirely.

In their words

Affirms the label

Grave, systematic and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid.

Richard Bennett — UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in AfghanistanAl Jazeera →

The subject / accused

Islamic laws are under implementation in Afghanistan, objecting to them is a problem with Islam.

Zabihullah Mujahid — chief spokesman, Taliban administrationAl Jazeera — Taliban response →

OHCHR — “Gender apartheid must be recognised” (2024) →End Gender Apartheid — campaign site →

The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Only South Africa is beyond dispute; every other legal characterization is attributed to the body that made it. The lenses diverge most on the treaties’ phrase “racial group” and on the difference between a legal finding and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.