Ahead of this weekend’s United Nations meeting with the Taliban in Qatar, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennet released a damning report on the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls.
Mr Bennet outlined in explicit detail how much further the Taliban’s discrimination and violation of women’s rights has gone since his last report on the topic in June 2023.
“The system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion institutionalized by the Taliban is motivated by and results in a profound rejection of the full humanity of women and girls,” his latest report released June 12 says.
“It is pervasive and methodical, and is institutionalized through and, in turn, reinforced by edicts and policies sanctioning the severe deprivation of fundamental rights.”
It itemises 52 edicts the Taliban has further delivered only since June 2023 to May 2024 that further deprive women of their humanity.
“These deprivations do not exist independently of each other. Rather, each deprivation systematically informs and interacts with others, creating a mutually reinforcing architecture of oppression,” the report says.
How did the UN response? Apparently by agreeing to keep women’s rights off the agenda in its third UN meeting on Afghanistan – a step taken to guarantee the de facto rulers would join the meeting.
Richard Bennet took to the New York Times for an op-ed on June 28 to publicise his alarm that this concession is a step too far.
“If these exclusions are the price of the Taliban’s presence in Doha, the cost is too high,” he writes in the NYT.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women also released a statement on June 28 calling for “active and direct inclusion of women and girls in these discussions which pertain to the most serious crisis in women’s rights globally.”
These exhortations are not new. The UN Security Council was advised last year by an independent assessment that any path to a stable and reintegrated Afghanistan into the international community must include measurable improvements in human rights.
Yet UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo is pushing ahead with the Doha meeting plan to keep women’s rights off the agenda, insisting the goal is not to legitimise the Taliban but rather to improve outcomes for Afghans.
“Having engagement doesn’t mean recognition. This isn’t about the Taliban. This is about Afghanistan and the people,” Ms DiCarlo told reporters on Wednesday.
If people with power like Ms DiCarlo truly want to make a difference to the Afghan people, they should instead push for official recognition of the gender apartheid being unleashed in Afghanistan, and act accordingly.
Official recognition of gender apartheid a better strategy and objective to stabilise and reintegrate Afghanistan
All authoritarian regimes have weaknesses and vulnerabilities that, if correctly identified, can undermine their stranglehold on power. These vulnerabilities vary across historical and social conditions, but they have one vulnerability in common: their resistance and opposition to change and development.
The Taliban’s religious authoritarianism harbors a particular hostility towards women’s rights and an intolerance for women’s presence in society.
In the meantime, across almost all historical and social conditions, we have witnessed that a society changes when the status of women changes. Women’s education, employment, and cultural and economic independence ultimately transform and develop society from the ground up.
In addition to enhancing the role of women, a society is also strengthened by the presence of strong civil institutions. These institutions ultimately become the primary and collective defenders of citizens’ rights and fundamental rights at the macro level. The power of authoritarian systems in many societies is proportional to the weakening of civil institutions and those defending fundamental human rights.
The Taliban’s opposition and hostility towards women effectively suppresses social transformation in Afghanistan. In this way, the edicts against women are not merely about denying them education, employment, or partial freedoms within society. These edicts are the oppression of all the people of Afghanistan.
When women’s rights are ensured – meaning women have the right to education, employment, and political participation – Afghanistan can more powerfully overcome its circumstances and move towards humanizing social, cultural, and political relationships.
Transforming a society to one based on human values is what most people of Afghanistan desire. This aspiration does not directly correlate with national, religious, or linguistic preferences, but over the long term, it ultimately ensures these rights and transforms national or religious rights from a political matter into a matter of citizenship.
The likes of DiCarlo in the United Nations will offer platitudes about wanting to advance Afghanistan by focusing on discussions of economics, counter-narcotics and private sector business. But they are ignoring the obvious solution which lies in lifting the crushing oppression of girls and women that is suffocating the country at its core.
This oppression is the Taliban’s blindspot and remains the key weakness in their authority. While the Taliban grasp it as a display of strength and authority, in the long run, it is a catastrophic mistake.
The UN and the international community would be wiser to move to focus on this mistake and strategically invest in shifting it. This could potentially save all the people of Afghanistan.
The precendent of fighting against apartheid in the legal and diplomatic arena
The history of apartheid in South Africa serves as a good example of the difference more attention on this system can make in the long run. International education and learning and recognition of the disastrous power imbalance South Africa was enacting. The struggle against that apartheid regime was not an armed conflict aimed at overthrowing and eliminating the racial superiority system. If anything, the armed conflict of the African National Congress (ANC), which was much stronger and more cohesive than current armed groups operating in Afghanistan, only managed to create temporary challenges for the government.
What ultimately brought down that apartheid regime were the legal and diplomatic battles brought through the international recognition of racial apartheid as a crime against humanity.
Focusing on apartheid and formally recognising it as an illegitimate use of power was a fight that the founders and supporters of apartheid lacked the means and tools to defend against.
The insistence of white supremacists on the apartheid system was essentially an insistence on error, leading inevitably to further disastrous mistakes. Every decree based on racial apartheid and the suppression of Black people served to deepen the roots of apartheid. Nelson Mandela’s wisdom and anti-apartheid fighters eventually withdrew from the armed struggle and channeled all their energy into the international recognition of “racial apartheid”.
The primary objective of the armed struggle was to overthrow the system of racial apartheid. Shifting gears from armed struggle to legal and civil activism for the international recognition of racial apartheid as a crime against humanity completely altered the equation.
This shift in strategy eventually reduced the power of government control until the apartheid regime crumbled stronghold by stronghold.
In this instance, the international recognition of racial apartheid as a crime against humanity served as both a strategy and an objective for Black South Africans.
The current system of oppression along gender lines in Afghanistan is similar to South Africa’s along racial lines. The Taliban are attempting to build a government that fundamentally hinges on a gender-based apartheid.
The dehumanization of Afghans will not be solved by improving business with the Taliban
Mr Bennett’s report released this month presents an exceptional opportunity for the UN to take a different track, that instead of enticing and appeasing the Taliban, makes gender apartheid a crime that will not be tolerated.
The report spells out “the Taliban’s institutionalized system of oppression of Afghan women and girls” across five fundamental rights – the rights to education, employment, freedom of movement, health and access to justice.
Let this report be the catalyst not only for Afghan women but for women worldwide and for all the people of Afghanistan. Let’s focusing on the capacities outlined in this report and mobilize efforts to recognize gender apartheid under international law, to transform the justice movement globally, and to demand justice.
If gender apartheid is registered under international law as a crime against humanity, its benefits and advantages will extend to all justice movements, groups, and political forces in Afghanistan, encompassing both men and women.
Gender apartheid is the Taliban’s weakness. Let’s target this weakness to ultimately put an end to its oppressive and anti-women policies.
If we fail to do so, Mr Bennet’s report has pointed at what lies ahead for the people of Afghanistan – a catastrophic dehumanization the extent of which “the international community has not yet fully grasped”.
Regardless of the success of the UN’s economic and counter-narcotic conversations with the Taliban in Doha this weekend, we would do well to pay attention to the Special Rapporteur’s warning.
“Left unchecked, the Taliban’s institutionalized system of gender oppression will become more robust, as those resisting it suffer increasing violence, as memories of female role models and notions of female independence fade, and as new generations are raised and radicalized in a society unquestioning of its dehumanization and exploitation of women and girls.”
