Amnesty International declared on Monday that gender apartheid must be considered a crime under international law. This assertion aims to heighten awareness of international efforts to abolish institutionalized domination and oppression based on gender. Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard emphasized the international community’s failure to adequately address gender-based oppression and the absence of a robust legal framework to combat such acts. Callamard stated, “We are calling for the recognition of gender apartheid under international law to fill a major gap in our global legal framework. No one should ever be permitted to violate, segregate, silence or exclude people because of their gender,” according to Amnesty International.
Under current international law, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, persecution on the basis of gender is viewed as a crime against humanity. However, Amnesty International pointed out that this legal scope does not explicitly include gender apartheid. To address this gap, Amnesty’s Secretary General urged the UN and its member states to incorporate gender apartheid in the draft of the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity.
The concept of gender apartheid was initially highlighted by Afghan human rights defenders and feminist allies during the Taliban regime in the 1990s. Reports from that era, such as those from the University of California, Berkeley, detailed the dramatic shift in women’s rights under Taliban rule. More recently, the UN labeled Iran’s stringent hijab laws as components of gender apartheid and consistently condemned the ongoing gender discrimination in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s resurgence in 2021. On June 11, the UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan reported to the UN Human Rights Council that the systemic discrimination against Afghan women will result in enduring harm across all genders.