Women in Afghanistan are enduring a situation unlike anything seen in countries around the world.
Anti-women measures have effectively being enshrined into law these past three years by the Taliban de facto authorities, eradicating nearly all opportunities and pathways for women to participate in society.
While systemic and continuous misogyny persists on one hand, on the other, advocacy efforts to fight this hostility have lacked substantial impact and have yet to achieve tangible results.
Why is this the case? Why does the oppression of women in Afghanistan not receive more attention and condemnation globally? Moreover, why is there a lack of serious global interest in recognizing the gender apartheid unfolding in Afghanistan as a crime against humanity?
A. Lack of institutional will
The collapse of the republic system (previous government) in Afghanistan led to the disintegration of institutions whose primary function was to oversee, document, report, and ultimately to shape the advancement of human rights.
Several major and significant institutions during Afghanistan’s republic era were responsible for monitoring human rights and women’s rights including Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Parliamentary Committee on Women’s Affairs, the women’s section of the Presidential Office, and numerous domestic and international charities and NGOs all actively and extensively engaged in human rights and women’s issues daily.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, these institutions disintegrated almost overnight. This collapse abruptly halted the access these institutions had to monitor, document, and address human rights and women’s rights issues.
It also eliminated the space these institutions had opened to gather resources, exchange ideas, and concentrate efforts. Most organized activities to further women’s rights disappeared. In the absence of the protection and support of the institutions, individual efforts also gradually dwindled and relegated the work of human rights to the periphery as priorities shifted to surviving the loss of freedoms, economic collapse, and other challenges under Taliban rule.
With the institutional centers gone, former members of these bodies were unable or unwilling to create similar structures abroad, resulting in a lack of institutional frameworks to continue advocacy for women’s rights.
Meanwhile, the situation for women inside Afghanistan deteriorated daily. Severe forms of systematic discrimination against women are being enforced, and there is no avenue for advocacy within Afghanistan itself.
In this context, the monitoring, documenting, reporting, and addressing the status of women is more crucial than ever. Currently, it’s the only effective way to combat the most extreme gender-based oppression.
B. Lack of cohesion and uniformity
Advocacy for women’s rights has long been plagued by significant shortcomings. Ethnic divides, personality cults, and a lack of deep awareness have consistently challenged the work of activists and women’s rights advocates.
During the republic era, an influx of resources and the ensuing struggles over material interests also severely impacted women’s advocacy efforts.
After the fall of the republic, these problems have continued to play out for a significant portion of those active in women’s rights advocacy. Over the past three years, there has not been a single instance where advocates have convened to analyze the challenges, gather resources, or reach a consensus on their approach.
This lack of cohesion and uniformity has ultimately slowed the struggle against gender apartheid and rendered much of the effort for women’s rights almost ineffective. In a context where more concentrated focus and a unified perspective is essential, the fight has become more fragmented and arbitrary.
As a result, some individuals who are eager to engage and advocate have lacked resources and access to decision-making centers, while others with relatively more recognition and access have opted instead to operate individually based on personal preferences. This situation could have wasted significant energy and resources.
C. Project-based advocacy
Alongside these factors, one of the most damaging experiences has been project-based advocacy. The influx of substantial resources during the republic era and the lack of institutional capacity to absorb these resources led many advocacy activities to become project driven. The most significant harm of project-based approaches is a reduction of human agency and a contamination of motivations behind human rights activities.
At their core, human rights work differs from other endeavors both in terms of motivation and goals. The primary motivation for human rights work is ethical, with the ultimate goal being to eradicate inequality and oppression. The primary objective of channeling resources is to facilitate human agency and create conditions where ethical motivations can be realized and actively pursued.
A project-based approach to advocacy alters these motivations and objectives. It creates a system where work to secure resources is the primary motivation, while the fight against inequality and oppression takes a secondary role.
While project-based activities may yield some results that benefit advocacy efforts, the core issue remains the sustainability, effectiveness, and commitment to continuing the struggle in non-project-based conditions.
With the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan and the sidelining of the country’s issues, project funding and resources have become limited. This constraint has caused human rights activities and women’s advocacy efforts to take on a more insular and fragmented nature.
Purely activist efforts and those driven by genuine advocacy motivations are rare. Due to insufficient support from both the general community and women’s rights activists, these efforts often lack tangible results and have not yet managed to create a significant impact.
Historical experience with project-based activities has led many women’s rights activists to focus their advocacy efforts on political circles and forums. This focus has resulted in advocacy either coming to a halt or becoming purely symbolic in the absence of such forums.
While the outcomes of these gatherings may receive positive media attention, they often lead to misleading and deceptive results. It is a mistake to believe that combating complex and systematic discrimination, such as gender apartheid, can be effectively achieved through participation in forums alone.
Just as discrimination is layered, systemic, and institutional, the struggle against it must also be continuous, systematic, and institutional. Hosting forums can be effective only if activities at other levels and through other methods also persist. In the absence of ongoing activities and institutional support, such forums become merely symbolic and performative, fostering a misleading belief that such gatherings could ultimately dismantle the foundations of gender apartheid.
Solutions: Reviving Afghan-based human rights institutions
On the brink of the fourth year of gender apartheid, advocacy for Afghan women needs to be redefined and reassessed.
Establishing strong and effective Afghan-led institutions should be a top priority for advocates. For instance, the revival of two critical bodies — the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs — could help to replace the now-defunct organisations and institutions that once helped anchor the fight for Afghan women.
Just as many Afghan embassies and other national groups have not given up their status in exile, so too these organizations could wield some power and a voice for those they always represented.
Given the wealth of past experience, models, and even supportive funding channels, reviving these institutions should not be overly complex. The risk of not re-establishing these strong institutions far outweighs the challenges that may be faced in doing so.
If we fail to continuously monitor and document the status of women and human rights in Afghanistan, we risk gender apartheid becoming more entrenched and normalized, not only in Afghanistan but even in other parts of the world. Reviving these institutions would also help eliminate the dispersion of forces for human rights, creating a central hub to foster unity of purpose and end gender apartheid once and for all.
Note: This analytical article is Rukhshana Media’s opinion on the third anniversary of Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban regime.
