Seventy-seven years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is deeply troubling that in 2025 we are still fighting for the recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity. And this, even though the world finally acknowledged, at least since Vienna in 1993, that women’s rights are human rights, after decades of women campaigning and demanding exactly that.
At least since 1982, when the Iranian regime imposed a series of draconian laws stripping women of rights they had held culturally for centuries—and rights they had fought for over generations—we urged the UN Human Rights Committee and international human rights organizations to acknowledge these abuses as gender apartheid. Instead, we were told these were “general rights issues” or simply “cultural matters,” and that we should negotiate with the very government imposing these oppressive rules. In other words, women’s human rights were not recognized. Iranian women were forced to fight inch by inch to reclaim rights they had already secured while also joining the global struggle to establish women’s rights are human rights. All the while Islamist in Algeria, Sudan , Pakistan and other societies adopted similar policies, while the international community remained silent.
Then the Taliban 1 ( 1996-2001) seized control in Afghanistan. They implemented even harsher restrictions: closing girls’ schools, banning women from work and education, forcing them to wear the full-body burqa, and even ordering windows to be painted black so women would not be seen. Their intention was clear, to erase women not only from public life but from public spaces itself. The world once again witnessed the reality of gender apartheid, and activism and campaign surged, only to be disrupted by the events of 9/11. Today, after the collapse of the Afghan government and the withdrawal of international forces 2021, the Taliban have returned with the same oppressive ideology and even more extreme rules.
Forty-five years after the first calls to recognize gender apartheid, Afghan women now face the most systematic and complete version of it. Women and girls are forbidden to study, work, travel, visit parks, or pursue medical training. These are not isolated decisions—they form a deliberate political system built on the segregation, domination, and exclusion of one gender by another.
This is why naming the crime matters. Gender Apartheid is not discrimination. It is not tradition. It is not religion. It is a political system of apartheid, designed to make women invisible, silent, and dependent simply because they are women.
Recognizing gender apartheid is essential. Apartheid is already defined in international law as a crime against humanity. Calling the Taliban’s system what it is, gender apartheid, creates a pathway for accountability through the United Nations, international courts, and global advocacy. It compels states to stop treating the oppression of women of Afghanistan and beyond as an internal matter and to acknowledge that half the population is being systematically denied their basic human rights.
By naming the crime, the international community honours the decades-long struggle of women in Iran, Afghanistan, and beyond. Together, we strengthen the universal promise of human rights and make it harder for the world to look away.
Naming the crime is the first step toward ending it.
Homa Hoodfar
WLUML