ISLAMABAD: The Taliban government in Afghanistan has instituted a “systematic and institutionalized campaign aimed at erasing Afghan women and girls, including through a plethora of restrictive edicts,” United Nations experts said in a press release on Monday.
“The de facto authorities have banned girls from education beyond grade 6, severely restricted women’s right to work, and effectively criminalized their presence in public life,” the press release said.
The Taliban government has moved backwards when it comes to rights for women ever since it came to power in 2021. The government has ratified laws that restrict women's access to education, public-sector jobs, and even amusement parks.
According to a press release issued by the UN, states must ensure the meaningful participation of Afghan women leaders and gender justice activists in the imminent negotiations on the new treaty.
“For the treaty on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity to be a transformative instrument of justice, it cannot be drafted in a vacuum,” the experts said.
The experts included five members from the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett.
The experts, according to the press release, said that the treaty's legitimacy would depend on whether it “enables the meaningful participation of those who are living under the very atrocities the treaty seeks to address and prevent.”
“States must therefore stand in solidarity with Afghan women, girls, and others targeted based on their gender by ensuring their meaningful inclusion, and with serious consideration of the lived realities on the ground in Afghanistan,” it said.
Separately, in a post on X, former Afghan parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi welcomed the statement from the UN experts, urging the “UN sixth committee to ensure women, especially survivors, are heard and included in every step of the negotiation process on the convention on crimes against humanity.”
According to the press release, experts urged the member states to heed the calls of Afghan women and other activists “to include the crime of gender apartheid within the new treaty.”
They said that Afghanistan stood as one of the “clearest and most urgent examples of why inclusive survivor participation is indispensable.”
“The voices of Afghan women in civil society are not merely testimonies; they are authoritative sources and primary experts on the oppression they face,” they said, adding that their participation was essential to “ensuring that international law evolves to address the realities of the atrocities unfolding today.”
They called on states to ensure the “codification of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, and uphold gender-responsive provisions throughout the treaty.”
“At the same time, we urge states to strengthen other modes of support for Afghan women, girls, and gender-diverse persons, including through actively preventing normalization of the Taliban de facto regime, establishing safe, legal and long-term immigration pathways and providing sustained funding for women-led civil society,” UN experts said.
“Naming gender apartheid is a necessary step toward dismantling it,” they added.
“We must stand in solidarity with those on the front lines by providing a legal name for their lived reality, ensuring the international community can hold perpetrators accountable for the totality of their crimes,” the press release concluded.
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