Should the institutionalized discrimination against women in Afghanistan and Iran be recognized as “gender apartheid”? A heavy and charged term which inevitably refers to racial apartheid which has plagued South Africa for decades and which has been actively fought by the international community. However, increasingly loud voices are being raised so that this “21st century apartheide century” be named as such and that the international community seizes legal tools to fight against sexual segregation set up as a political project.
“If this isn’t apartheid, then what is? says Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj defiantly, in an interview at the Duty. What the Taliban do to women is because of their gender. It is because they are women that the doors of the universities are closed to them, that they cannot work, that they cannot walk in the streets, that they cannot go to see a doctor. »
An ideology that is not dictated by the Koran, but by a political design, underlines the 75-year-old Afghan, who lives in Kabul and who is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023. “Since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan a year and a half ago, they passed about 80 decrees. Of this number, 53 concern women, ”she denounces.
A vice that is constantly tightening on women by shredding their rights one by one while the attention of the international community is monopolized by the war in Ukraine, she is indignant. “Every time the Taliban couldn’t get what they wanted or couldn’t make themselves heard the way they wanted [notamment lorsqu’ils n’ont pu faire reconnaître leur représentant à l’ONU], they have cracked down on women, continues Mahbouba Seraj, who devotes his life to being the spokesperson for Afghan women. Meanwhile, the whole world watches, but remains silent. »
political project
The term “apartheid” — an Afrikaans word meaning “separation” or “set apart” — was coined by South African Prime Minister Daniel Malan to refer to the policies of racial segregation that took place from 1948 to 1991 between whites and non-whites in South Africa, says researcher Karima Bennoune in an article entitled “The international obligation to counter gender apartheid in Afghanistan”, published last year in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.
In interview at Duty, the University of Michigan professor of international law and former UN special rapporteur for cultural rights argues that just as South Africa had done for non-whites, Afghanistan has entrenched systematic discrimination against women in the country’s laws. “It is at the heart of political ideology [governing ideology] of the Taliban, says the researcher.
But unlike discrimination based on skin color, discrimination based on gender is erroneously nuanced by cultural relativism, she laments. “The failure to recognize discrimination against women as a political issue above all else [et non un enjeu culturel ou religieux] is one of the difficulties. »
Legal tools
However, using the term “gender apartheid” to describe what is happening in Afghanistan or Iran would allow the international community to seize international legal tools to combat it. “What we say to all the nations of the world is that to punish, it must be named as a crime, as you did for racial apartheid”, argues French lawyer Linda Weil-Curiel, secretary general of the International Women’s Law League, which has promoted the use of the concept of gender apartheid since 1992.
Linda Weil-Curiel signed last month in the French daily The world an open letter calling on the international community to use the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid to crack down. “It takes coercion,” she says in an interview.
An approach that Karima Bennoune also recommends. “What is needed is the same kind of commitment and energy that has been devoted to countering racial apartheid, and for other states to understand that they have a legal obligation to adopt effective measures to put an end to this situation of apartheid. »
In the 1973 International Convention, the crime of apartheid — described as a crime against humanity which violates international law — is linked to racial segregation. To include systematic discrimination against women, a broader interpretation of the concept could be given to it, a change could be made or even a new legal tool could be created, argue, in turn, these two jurists.
A course which will not be without difficulty and which will certainly be carried out over the long term. Already in 2000, the professor emeritus of law of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Ann Elizabeth Mayer named the phenomenon while questioning the inability of the international community to mobilize in an article entitled “A benign apartheid: how gender “apartheid” was rationalized,” published in the journal UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs.
More than two decades later, the retired professor salutes, in a written comment sent to the Duty, the growing – albeit slow – realization “that if racial apartheid is considered a heinous violation of international human rights law, gender apartheid should face the same condemnation”. A path, however, slowed down by the tendency to see institutionalized discrimination against women as a “cultural” phenomenon reflecting local traditions and values. But although there are signs that the international community is moving in the right direction, this movement is happening “at an uneven and often glacial pace”, she concludes.