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“If the world had responded sooner, how many lives might have been spared from the effects?” 

Time and time again, society asks this question when it comes to injustice. Today, we face that same moral and legal question, and this time it is regarding gender. From Kabul to Tehran, state-imposed gender discrimination is violently erasing women from public life. The term “gender apartheid” is no longer theoretical as it is now the reality of millions of people. According to Sadiq Amini, international security expert and founder of Afghanistan Impact, “the silence of the international community is not neutrality — it is complicity. Every day of inaction is another day stolen from Afghan girls who are banned from classrooms, playgrounds, and dreams.”

This article argues that international law does not exist in a vacuum, and nation-states also hold power to directly confront gender apartheid. Indeed, international law solidifies as a result of nation-state circumstances, and depends on symbiosis with the national laws, stances, and advocacy of individual states. This makes national advocacy a valuable asset in the toolkit of legal mechanisms available to fight gender apartheid. 

Defining Gender Apartheid

Gender apartheid refers to a state-sanctioned and legally enshrined system of legally mandated and enforced discrimination against women and girls. It applies to all women and girls in the affected nation, and broadly applies to all aspects of life, from governance, to education, economic inclusion, political participation, and membership in civil society. Gender apartheid is distinct from gender discrimination because it is a systematic legal framework that criminalizes being a woman or girl, and is codified into the legal systems of Afghanistan and Iran. Gender apartheid requires women and girls to be structurally and systematically cut off from fundamental rights, simply because of their gender, including for example, exclusions from public life, education, political power, and leadership. According to Amini, “for the women of Afghanistan, gender apartheid is not a legal debate — it is the air they are forced to breathe. It dictates whether they can leave their homes, study, work, or even walk in a park with their children.”

Gender apartheid is a variation of the racial apartheid system first recognized in South Africa. Today, gender apartheid exists in its most heinous form in Afghanistan at the direction of the Taliban. Disturbingly, it also exists with a largely internationally-accepted status in Iran under the control of the Islamic Republic. In both cases, the basic criteria of apartheid are met:

1. systematic discrimination applicable to all members of a specific group;
2. systemic codification into law of apartheid against that group;
3. laws restricting or limiting participation in society (e.g., movement, education, decision-making); and
4. violation of apartheid laws is a basis of punishment. 

Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan and Iran

In Afghanistan, gender apartheid exists in its most severe form. The Taliban has enforced one of the most sweeping rollbacks of women’s rights in modern history. It even has extended to foreign NGOs operating in Afghanistan, requiring removal of the word “woman” from their names, and terminating online educational courses. Girls are banned from education beyond the sixth grade, women are prohibited from most jobs, and in order to move in public, women must have a mahram (a male guardian). Women have been banned from the most basic human interactions within their physical environment; they are denied entry into public parks, gyms, cannot use public transportation alone, cannot sing in public, cannot drive, and the list grows unabated. As Amini points out, this is like “telling an entire generation of girls that their only crime is being born female. That is what the Taliban has done — sentencing millions of Afghan girls to a lifetime of illiteracy and invisibility.”

Similarly, life for girls in Iran begins and ends with state-sanctioned gender discrimination, and becomes a part of almost every aspect of their daily lives. In Iran, there is a variation of the gender apartheid system but a similar end goal; it is less severe against women and girls than the system in Afghanistan, but is premised on the same construct. The state enforces mandatory hijab laws, restricts women’s access to political and judicial office, requires male guardians to approve women’s travel and employment, restricts women’s marital and custody rights, and has violently cracked down on protests led by women, most recently during the 2022 “Woman Life Freedom” uprising sparked by the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini. 

Gender apartheid in Iran also benefits from masking techniques used by the Islamic Republic, with token female members of parliament and female morality police who perpetuate gender apartheid rather than stand against it. These collaborators parallel examples of South African Bantustan leaders Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Lucas Mangope, who along with other tribal chiefs and homeland leadership were widely criticized for actions that upheld racial apartheid policies.  

Even though Iran and Afghanistan have different leadership and political systems, both of these states enforce gender apartheid, cementing systematic exclusion and oppression based on gender into their political and legal frameworks. These two cases demonstrate that gender apartheid can exist on a spectrum, and prove why we must challenge any form of apartheid against women and girls. 

Gender Apartheid, Islam and Culture

No mention of gender apartheid is complete without dispelling harmful stereotypes that impede galvanizing action. No recognized Islamic legal tradition requires gender apartheid, as demonstrated by the many states governed by Islamic law that do not have gender apartheid. The perspective that “this is their culture,” is misplaced. Gender apartheid is political rather than cultural. Afghanistan has been a Muslim majority country for centuries, but in contrast to the Taliban’s gender apartheid, has had many periods historically in which women participated in government, education, the workforce and public life, particularly during the two decades of democratic rule from 2001-2021. Similarly, gender apartheid is a construct imposed on Iranian women from the current ruling regime, in stark contrast to previous historical eras. Gender apartheid is actively opposed by considerable numbers of  Iranian women, who have been demanding equality for over forty years; most recently as seen in the women-led Woman Life Freedom protests of 2022. Simply stated, while its architects justify gender apartheid with reference to Islam, the legitimacy of this claim does not hold water. 

International Law is Not Enough

International legal mechanisms such as United Nations fact-finding missions and cases before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) are significant at a symbolic level, and effective in raising awareness and spurring advocacy. Yet, while they do make headlines and are vital to the campaign to end gender apartheid, international legal mechanisms are slow moving and have limited scope. A key constraint at this time is the lack of internationally codified recognition of gender apartheid as a distinct crime, although international legal efforts also are underway to expand the racial basis of apartheid in the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC) to include gender. Overall, challenging gender apartheid through international legal mechanisms requires tremendous front-end bandwidth to commence; once initiated, international legal mechanisms move at a glacial pace and require constant sustained and coordinated effort. Amini stresses that “we cannot wait for history to look back in shame. The courts move slowly, but Afghan women are running out of time. Their erasure is happening in real time — and demands real-time response.”

The ICC, for example, is viewed as a court of last resort, and it took years before the ICC issued arrest warrants for the Supreme Leader and Chief Justice of the Taliban in July 2025, warrants that are largely symbolic given that neither Taliban leader has been or is likely to travel outside of Afghanistan. Similarly, it took many months for Canada, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands to officially come forward to begin a first-of-its-kind action against the Taliban in the ICJ based on violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, known as CEDAW. While these efforts under international law are necessary, they are not sufficient on their own. 

National Advocacy as a Catalyst 

There exists a symbiosis between international law and nation-state law that can be harnessed for the sake of the women and girls subjected to gender apartheid. International law cannot exist without the nation-state; it depends on states for the circumstances that give it purpose, for the life it gains through ratification, and for the adherence it acquires through state-level implementation. National positions are the official stances adopted by states on how they interpret and apply international law; these statements play a critical role in shaping legal norms and consensus, developing customary international law, and help to lay the groundwork for future treaties. In other words, international legal human rights progress is built and sustained on a foundation of national action. State level engagement is of enormous value, and meaningfully complements international efforts to end gender apartheid. 

Indeed, there is an underappreciated human rights engine that can be unleashed through nation-state laws, regulations and policies. It was the state of Jamaica that took the first action to impose economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Nations took concrete action to stop selling arms and munitions to South Africa, while the UN General Assembly could only issue guidance. Individual state parties raise objections before the United Nations, vote on the Security Council, and provide funding to judicial mechanisms such as the ICC and ICJ. States are the first to move beyond recommendations, to issue sanctions, to seize property, to recall ambassadors, and take other measures that amplify the global upswell against oppression. States are in a prime position to help end gender apartheid and amplify simultaneous efforts in international law.

The Path Forward

According to Hasina Jalal, a scholar and advocate for Afghan human rights, “recognizing gender apartheid is not just a legal imperative; it is a moral necessity. The world cannot afford to delay action while millions of women and girls are erased from public life.” In order to achieve recognition of gender apartheid as a crime under international law, states can play a pivotal role through domestic action. This can include introducing national legislation that officially recognizes gender apartheid, imposing sanctions on complicit actors, placing conditions on foreign aid, and publicly stating that what is happening in Afghanistan and Iran meets the legal threshold for apartheid. “Universal jurisdiction is a powerful tool that states should be wielding in the face of gender apartheid, and similarly, individual states can take many meaningful actions in the area of sanctions, such as sanctioning individual Taliban members under Magnitsky style laws, imposing travel bans against Taliban members to their states, and much more. They can also engage with and pressure fellow states that are engaging with the Taliban and indirectly helping to normalize gender apartheid,” says Lauryn Oates, the Executive Director of Right to Learn Afghanistan, a Canadian organization that has worked to advance women’s human rights in Afghanistan for nearly 30 years. 

Countries like Canada and Germany have already taken public and legal stances to influence global rules on cyber issues. The same approach can and should be used to address gender apartheid. Until individual states officially recognize and respond to gender apartheid through the domestic mechanisms they have available, the advancement of international law against gender apartheid will remain slow and more symbolic than enforceable. It is essential to optimize the twofold strength of a shared and symbiotic value system between international and national law against gender apartheid. Amini explains it is imperative that “gender apartheid is named, recognized, and punished — just as racial apartheid was. Anything less is to tell Afghan and Iranian women that their lives matter less. Decision-makers today have a choice: to codify justice or to codify indifference.” The best avenue to achieve an end to gender apartheid is through recognition that international law and states both have roles to play, roles that are inherently intertwined and should be harnessed equally in order to yield maximum impact in the fight against gender apartheid.

Conclusion

International law is not static. It is an ever-evolving force impacted by and based on the decisions, advocacy and legal interpretations of individual states. Gender apartheid, like racial apartheid before it, must be opposed through legal and political action at the state level. By pushing strong legal positions, passing targeted legislation in their countries, and building coalitions for enforcement, states can bolster the path towards codifying gender apartheid into international law.

Where international law faces barriers related to the ease of initiating proceedings, procedural speed and enforcement feasibility, national advocacy plays a welcome and much needed supplementary role in advancing international human rights initiatives. There is a vital feedback loop between international and nation-state legal mechanisms, and advocacy that understands how to tap into and channel this interplay will have the most success in countering gender apartheid. 

Thus, the inherent synergy between international and national law means that national advocacy not only is a powerful tool to fight gender apartheid, but also is essential to developing a rigorous, enforceable and legally acknowledged global construct capable of ending gender apartheid.