This is the first of two parts of an interview with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai and the director of the Malala Fund Afghanistan Initiative Sahar Halaimzai, led by editor in chief of Rukhshana Media Zahra Joya.
Zahra Joya: Many women and girls in Afghanistan feel the world has abandoned them, particularly after the UN met Taliban leaders in Doha without Afghan women present and without women’s rights on the agenda. Are they right? Have diplomats, global institutions and the mainstream media abandoned Afghan women and girls?
Malala Yousafzai: When I hear the uproar of Afghan women that they’ve been abandoned, I think there’s a strong reason behind it, and that’s the fact that it’s been three years since Afghan women have been denied their human rights.
Girls have been banned from schools for more than one thousand days and women are excluded from conversations with the Taliban where decisions about the future are made. If any woman is in that situation, I’m sure she will feel betrayed, she will feel the outrage. So when I look at the claims from Afghan women that they feel abandoned, that they feel that people are leaving them behind, it is absolutely right.
And for how long should they wait? They were told in the first few months that, of course women’s rights are our priority. But before you know it, it has already been three years. It scares me and it worries me to know that this could go on. This could go on and women could continue to be excluded.
I really want to share my solidarity and support with Afghan women, especially the Afghan women activists in the civil society activists who are there on the front lines. They’re advocating for Afghan women at all of these global forums in the country, outside the country, and their voices are so critical.
That’s why in the Doha forum when there were discussions, this is the point that I highlighted to the Secretary General of the United Nations, that women cannot be excluded, and this is the message that I want to carry forward. We cannot exclude Afghan women from the conversations where decisions about their future are made and we cannot ignore the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.
Zahra Joya: Afghan women see and appreciate the effort you have put into campaigning for gender apartheid in Afghanistan to be recognized as a crime against humanity. Why is this a priority for you? How close do you believe we are to achieving this objective?
Malala Yousafzai: When I think about a ban on girls’ education, it shocks me that it can go on for so long and we see that it’s becoming normalized. Countries are normalizing relationships with the Taliban and they’re treating [the education ban] as a side issue.
When a system like gender apartheid gets codified, it gives us an opportunity to call the edicts and the decrees the Taliban are issuing against women and girls a crime. So that we recognize what the Taliban are doing is systematic oppression and it is a crime against humanity. We cannot allow this to happen. And for me it’s about the accountability.
Sahar can tell us more about the importance of giving that hope to Afghan women.
Zahra Joya: Yes, please.
Sahar Halaimzai: I think two years ago very few people were talking about what was happening in Afghanistan as gender apartheid. Two years later there is a broad global coalition of NGOs, of leaders, of supporters, of allies like Malala, and the Malala Fund and member states of the UN who are very open to the idea of adding gender apartheid to the crimes against humanity treaty.
So, I think we’re a lot closer than we were two years ago and I think it’s really important to keep an eye on that momentum and for everybody to keep learning more about gender apartheid and to keep pushing all representatives and our leaders to think about gender apartheid when they’re sitting across the table from the Taliban.
Malala Yousafzai: Yes, and to add to that; I had the opportunity to visit South Africa last December. When I met with the activists in South Africa and the way they were talking about apartheid and how they all came together, it was about the unity of activism in the country and also outside the country that helped them to dismantle and to challenge that system of apartheid.
I was invited to speak at the Nelson Mandela lecture and amazing human rights experts were there, including an Afghan activist, Metra Mehran, who spoke there. And this connection between South Africa and Afghanistan is very relevant. I remember the words of support from these incredible South African prominent figures who were saying, we do not want history to be repeated in any form. And we do not want to see another group of people that is women being oppressed systematically in another country. If it was wrong in South Africa, it is wrong in Afghanistan as well.
I have met politicians and representatives from other countries as well, including Albania and Malta and Mexico. And I am really optimistic that they are sharing their solidarity and they are sharing their openness to codifying gender apartheid. I think more countries should step forward and share their support. So there is that hope.
Zahra Joya: Thank you both for your efforts. A major question for Afghan women is whether recognizing gender apartheid as a crime against humanity will bring tangible change to their daily lives. Do you think it will?
Sahar Halaimzai: I think that’s a really good question. I think what is happening to women and girls in Afghanistan is so urgent. It’s happening to them today. It’s happening to them right now. So, we need to do everything that we can, push on whatever levels that we can, to make sure that they are supported in any way, that we can support them.
For that reason, Malala Fund, as part of the Afghanistan initiative which I run, is supporting education programs across the country for girls’ beyond grade six. We support advocacy efforts and women activists. We’re doing everything that we can to meet as much of the urgent need as possible.
Will codifying gender apartheid fix everything in Afghanistan overnight? It won’t. What it will do is it will give Afghan women the tools to be able to hold the Taliban accountable.
The amazing Penny Andrews, who’s a South African scholar and a friend of Malala and the Malala Fund, always says, in order to address the harm and repair the harm, first you have to name it. Which is why we’re calling it gender apartheid. So, the naming it, the codifying it, is a first step towards repairing that harm.
Malala Yousafzai: I think in the international system we need a mechanism of accountability for the violations of the rights of women and girls. And it is disappointing that we don’t really have that yet.
I want to make a distinction that, of course, we can talk about gender discrimination and gender persecution. And there are other forms of violations of human rights. But those are not sufficient to actually recognize the intensity of what is happening in Afghanistan on a systemic level in the whole country.
We know that the Taliban have issued more than 85 edicts and decrees limiting women and girls from going to salons, parks, and going to their schools or to a doctor, going to work. All of these basic things that every woman should be able to do freely have been taken away. And we know that the Taliban are making it really hard for women to have basic opportunities like any other person should have.
Gender apartheid as a system needs to be codified because we need to create a system of accountability. I want to feel safe, and I want Afghan girls to feel safe. We do not want to live in a world where, in 2024, girls can be banned from school and women can be banned from work. And we do not want to see that in the future happening ever again. We can never witness a ban on girls in access to education and we can never see women being limited from their rights.
Zahra Joya: Rukhshana recently reported on a video of a Taliban gang rape of a female activist. To verify it, I had to watch it myself and it is truly horrific. Why do you think there is not more global outrage about this kind of abuse, which is now well documented?
Malala Yousafzai: I can’t imagine the horrors that Afghan women have faced in the past three years from the Taliban from beating to, as you said, the recent video of a gang rape. It is horrendous, it is insane that it’s happening, and we are just allowing it and we are not screaming about it.
That’s why I think we need to push for this campaign against the gender apartheid that the Taliban have imposed, because we need to remind people that the people who are currently in power in Afghanistan are the Taliban. They are the ones who are doing these things, who are committing these horrible acts against women and girls of Afghanistan and usually of course it is going on to discrimination in so many levels.
You hope that the people who are in power, that they would be protecting you. When you are in a situation where those who should protect you are exploiting that power and they are abusing you and they are violating your human rights, where do you go?
Where do Afghan women go to see justice? Where they do they go when they are harmed when they are put in prisons? Where do they go? Because the Taliban are not going to give them justice. That’s again why codifying gender apartheid and creating a system of accountability is critical.
Malala Yousafzai is an education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She became an international symbol of the fight for girls’ education after she was shot in 2012 for opposing Taliban restrictions on female education in her home country of Pakistan.
Sahar Halaimzai is the director of the Malala Fund Afghanistan Initiative, which aims to raise global awareness of gender apartheid and strengthen networks of Afghan women activists and organizations.
