Geneva: The top UN expert on Afghan rights urged nations on Monday to think about designating "gender apartheid" as a global crime in order to hold the Taliban accountable for its severe and pervasive mistreatment of Afghan women.

Since overthrowing a foreign-backed government in August 2021, the Taliban regime has imposed a strict version of sharia law that prevents girls from attending secondary school, drives them out of many government positions, forbids them from travelling alone, and requires them to wear head covering outside the home.

Richard Bennett urged the UN Human Rights Council, "It is essential that we not turn a blind eye."
The Taliban's actions may constitute the "gender persecution" crime against humanity, according to the UN special rapporteur on the situation in Afghanistan, who was presenting his most recent report to the council.

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Additionally, he added, "the Taliban ideology and rule are based on grave, systematic, and institutionalised discrimination against women and girls, raising questions about whether they may be behind gender apartheid."

This kind of "serious human rights violations, which although not yet an explicit international crime, requires further study," he insisted.

Asserting that gender apartheid is an international crime would draw attention to the fact that other nations and the larger international community "have a duty to take effective action to end the practise," the report said.

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"Women often talk about being buried alive, breathing, but not being able to do much else without facing restrictions and punishments," said Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the Rawadari rights organisation and a former chairman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

She told the council, "Taliban have turned Afghanistan into a mass graveyard of Afghan women and girls' ambitions, dreams, and potential.
The UN has already referred to the conditions in Afghanistan under the Taliban as "gender-based apartheid," but the Rome Statute does not currently list this as one of the worst crimes against humanity.

On Monday, Bennett and others urged nations to take that into consideration.
With Akbar's support, the council was urged to "support the inclusion of gender apartheid in the Draught Convention on Crimes Against Humanity."

In her report, Bennett urged nations to "mandate a report on gender apartheid as an institutionalised system of discrimination, segregation, humiliation, and exclusion of women and girls." The report was created in collaboration with the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls.

In the report, it was recommended that this be done "with a view to developing further normative standards and tools, galvanising international legal condemnation and action to end it and ensure its non-repetition."

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On Monday, a number of national representatives endorsed the notion.

Bronwen Levy, a representative for South Africa, was one of them. She urged the international community to "take action against what the report describes as gender apartheid, much like it did in support of South Africa's struggle against racial apartheid."