To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, Rukhshana Media conducted an exclusive interview with Agnes Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International.
Zahra Joya: What is Amnesty International’s greatest concern when it comes to the women of Afghanistan today? Do you think the Taliban have completely undone the progress that Afghan women made over the past 20 years?
Agnes Callamard: Let there be no doubt about what the Taliban is doing. They are waging a war against Afghan women and Afghan girls. They are preventing women and girls from getting educated. They are preventing them from working. They are preventing them from getting out of their homes and moving freely. They are preventing them from speaking out- speaking their mind and denouncing their oppression. They are detaining them, arresting them and torturing them.
It is being done in a systemic and organized fashion. It is treating women and girls as second-class citizens and what the Taliban is doing has one name – it is gender persecution, and it is a crime against humanity.
Zahra Joya: As you may be aware, there is an ongoing campaign against gender apartheid. What is Amnesty International’s position on the gender apartheid campaign?
Agnes Callamard: Well, we already support the campaign. We have followed the very courageous trailblazers, including Afghan women and Iranian women and others around the world.
We believe that there is a major gap in international law in terms of recognizing a form of discrimination and oppression and persecution that is gender-based. It is not the crime against humanity of gender oppression. It is something that is much more systematic. It touches every single aspect of the lives of women and girls. It has deep roots and it must be eradicated. And for Amnesty International, there is only one not one way to eradicate that, but it must begin by recognizing and naming the crimes.
This is why it is so important for the international community to recognize the crime of gender apartheid. We are calling on states to take steps in that direction and we are advocating in the context of the current ongoing discussion and agreement on the draft convention on crimes against humanity, and we are demanding that this draft convention include the recognition of the crime of gender apartheid.
Look, it is not going to solve the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan, but it is really important that we name it for what it is. and right now we don’t have a word under International Law.
Yes, we have the word that we have used at Amnesty which is that of gender persecution, but this is more than gender persecution. It is so deep and it touches every aspect of the life of women and girls since they are born to the moment they’re going to die, and that must be named.
Zahra Joya: Despite international appeals and advocacy from human rights organizations like Amnesty International, why do you believe that the Taliban continue to exacerbate the living conditions for women in Afghanistan?
Agnes Callamard: This is, in many ways, a difficult question because the treatment of women by the Taliban has gotten progressively worse from when they took power to now. We have seen more and more decrees and edicts being adopted, all of which aim to curtail the rights, justice and dignity of women and girls.
What the international community is doing is clearly not enough otherwise maybe we would not have this situation. But there are actors in the international community that are saying the right thing and are, to a certain extent, doing the right thing. We can talk about those states that are going to court on behalf of Afghan women and girls.
But what is lacking right now is a joint, united, strong consolidated position within the international community. We don’t have that. We have various people speaking here and there, and we also have many people saying nothing, so that lack of unanimity. The lack of consensus.
I’m not that optimistic we could have a complete consensus, but at the moment we have nothing like that. We have really a plethora of positions and of different forms of engagement with the Taliban, and this is greatly – greatly – emboldening the Taliban in terms of continuing its attacks on women and girls.
So I will say, what is missing first and foremost is a united, strong, global position that the Taliban cannot treat women and girls as second-class citizens, and that it must revoke the measures it has taken.
We need a really strong united position on that, and we don’t have it at the moment.
Zahra Joya: Despite the fact we don’t have strong unity at the moment, the Taliban also seems to ignore international appeals and demands, and treating the issue like there’s a lack of serious pressure on them. Is the global community turning a blind eye to the situation of women in Afghanistan?
Agnes Callamard: I won’t say the entire international community is turning a blind eye. We know that Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands in September 2024 initiated legal proceedings against the Taliban for their violation of the CEDAW, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women. So that’s a strong position, and it’s about holding the Taliban to account. It’s about fighting impunity, and this is great.
We also know that there was a Security Council resolution that called for the reversal in 2023 of the measures taken by the Taliban.
That is two important positions, but clearly it is not enough.
Clearly, the Taliban has sufficient allies within the international community that it feels it can defy the demands of the rest – the principal demand of the rest of the international community. So really, the lack of a unified position that women and girls must be protected and that violation of their rights is an absolute red line, that unified position is lacking.
What do we need? We certainly need, I think, more accountability measures along the lines of what we are seeing right now with the four states. We need the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, to be involved.
Recently there was a major achievement, which is when the International Criminal Court prosecutor announced [23 January 2025] its application for an arrest warrant against the Taliban leaders. That is sending the right signal. It is absolutely saying, impunity no more! And we know that the Taliban has been emboldened by the impunity.
So, it gives me a bit of hope that in the last year we have seen some evidence of the international community suddenly, maybe too late, but suddenly realizing, wow, what’s happening here? We have more than half of the population of that country living in chains, absolutely living under forms of oppression and repression and discrimination that has been unknown so far, at least for the last two decades, even though it was there before in Afghanistan.
But that’s not enough. And I want to reiterate what I said: we need a much more unified position. We need, again, more Security Council resolution on the Taliban. And, you know, there must be red lines. No one should engage with the Taliban, and certainly not recognize the Taliban, until the removal of those measures against women and girls.
Zahra Joya: In Afghanistan now, there are multiple crises its people are facing. Refugee crisis, humanitarian crisis. And this all has a significant impact on women’s situation. Can you highlight any findings from Amnesty on this?
Agnes Callamard: It’s not directly our findings, but findings of humanitarian actors on the ground that are telling us 85% of the population live on less than $ Zahra joya a day. What that tells us is that half of the country is in need of humanitarian assistance, the majority of the population is living in situations of food deprivation and other forms of deprivation. What they’re also telling us is that 3.5 million of kids are suffering malnutrition.
That was what they were telling us until the beginning of January. And then… they’re not telling us much more anymore. Why? Because of the US President’s decision to freeze American relief through USAID. And a large part of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan was paid by the Americans.
So, the very cruel decision by President Trump, within a week or so of taking office, has had tremendous impact already on Afghan people, and Afghan women in particular.
From what has been reported, atleast fifty organizations have had to cease operations in 28 provinces of the country. I cannot even begin to imagine the impact that will have on the lives of individuals that were already living in a dire situation and who were already so vulnerable. No more food, no more medical services, no more cash relief. All of that is going to be gone or is gone already. So, people are going to die. This is the only outcome of that cruel decision. It is going to kill people.
The second issue, which is a bit older, is the situation of refugees. So Afghan refugees have never been very welcome across the years, but they are particularly unwelcome right now, and particularly – but not only – by their neighboring states. Pakistan and Iran in particular have been orchestrating and pushing refugees back to Afghanistan. We have been told that over 800,000 Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan. But they did not “return” because they wanted to return, they returned because they did not have a choice.
In Pakistan, authorities have given Afghan refugees until June to return on their own or otherwise they will be forcibly repatriated. These are not the only countries that are being ungenerous and violating their international obligations.
In countries such as Turkey, but also in Europe, Afghan refugees or asylum seekers are no longer able to make their claims on the basis of where they are coming from. And we know that a number of them are being returned back to Afghanistan, even though it is not safe for women, it is not safe for girls, but it is also not safe for many men, depending on what they’ve done, who they are and their political position.
The US President not only has frozen USAID, but he has frozen the US resettlement program for refugees, which included a large number of Afghan refugees. So there, too, they have been made the victims of a cruel, frankly, irresponsible decision by someone who is so privileged, and yet could not even take a few minutes to think about what he was going to do to such vulnerable people in Afghanistan.
So, this is the humanitarian situation. It is coming on top or in addition or intertwined with the politically motivated attacks on women and girls.
Zahra Joya: Do you see any kind of solution for these crises? The humanitarian crisis? The refugee crisis?
Agnes Callamard: We have an international legal system, and we have international obligations.
Those international obligations are very clear. Do not forcibly repatriate people to places where their life is going to be at risk, where they’re going to be at risk of persecution.
There is absolutely no doubt that for the vast majority of women and girls who are currently refugees, sending them back to Afghanistan is putting them into a harmful situation. So, frankly, there should be no need of additional mechanisms because we should be able to rely on the Refugee Convention that has served the international community as well as it could for many decades. And now is not the time to give up on it, given the number of crises.
Zahra Joya: The Taliban have restricted media freedoms and put significant pressure on the media and journalists in Afghanistan, including jailing and imprisoning journalists. Women in particular are unable to work in this profession. What do you think could be the short-term and long-term consequences of this?
Agnes Callamard: In the short term, the main consequence is that individual journalists’ lives are at risk. We know that there has been something like 336 incidents of detention and torture and ill-treatment against journalists and media workers over the last three years. We know that there is basically no independent media left operating in Afghanistan.
What it means is that the Taliban is seeking to control information – the information that goes out and the information that people receive. It is really trying to impose censorship and propaganda, and in that way, control its own population.
But it is also trying to control how the rest of the world is getting information on Afghanistan because Afghan journalists, including women, have been key in terms of putting stories out which Western media or media in the Middle East and others have been able to work with. And that is now becoming more and more difficult because it’s also difficult for foreign journalists to access Afghanistan. So what we have is a blackout, is silencing, and it’s rendering women and girls invisible, including from the rest of the world.
That is very dangerous because what the eyes cannot see, what the ears cannot hear, what the heart cannot feel does not exist. So, it’s really important this work Rukhshana Media is doing and the work your colleagues are doing. We need to keep pushing those stories, vibrant stories, stories of harm and stories of resistance to the rest of the world.
Zahra Joya: The Taliban’s crackdown is escalating across all fronts, with limited access to information. What is Amnesty International’s approach to securing gender rights for Afghan women in the future? And what is the way ahead?
Agnes Callamard: Amnesty International has tested methods which are being challenged, I must say, because of the environment, but we are not giving up.
So, what do we do? We need to document the impact of those violations on women and girls, and we need to inform the world about what those decisions, policies, edicts by the Taliban, what they mean on the daily lives and dignity of women and girls. That remains a central function of Amnesty International.
A second central function is what we do at the level of international and multilateral advocacy at the UN and particularly at the Human Rights Council. We have been advocating for a strong Special Rapporteur, that we have, but we also want an international mechanism or commission of inquiry so that there can be data collected, evidence collected for criminal pursuit. So that’s something that we do.
We also advocate at the UN in New York, at the Security Council level, and at national level, our section, we have about 72 national sections, many of them will advocate that their government take a strong position on what’s happening in Afghanistan.
We are asking them in our meetings, in almost all of our meetings, “Do not give up, stand firm!” This is a red line and you cannot suggest that women and girls in Afghanistan should not be part of the future and the present of Afghanistan. So that’s a very important part of the work, the advocacy that we do with governments.
We engage in a range of media work. We’re going to run a campaign on refugees, trying to convince Pakistan not to push back and repatriate forcibly the Afghan refugees.
We’re going to work with others. Coalition building is absolutely key. We’re trying to protect women’s human rights defenders. We have a relief program that is devoted to the protection of women defenders, women journalists, and so on. And that’s a very important part of our work.
We are advocating for women, organizations and human rights defenders to be part of the Doha process. We are demanding that the UN does not give up on women and civil society, that there cannot be negotiation on the future of Afghanistan without the voice of Afghan women and Afghan civil society being heard and without them sitting at the table.
So this is our plan. This is our work. And I can assure you that we will not – we will not – give up on our fight for the women and girls of Afghanistan.
Zahra Joya: What message do you have for this 8 March International Women’s Day?
Agnes Callamard: Resist. We need to stand up and resist. We need to resist with and for Afghan women and Afghan girls. But we need to resist for all women and girls, because right now there is a deliberate organized attacks against women’s rights, against LGBTQ rights. There is an organized attacks against gender. There is a so-called cultural war against gender.
And the only response that we can give to that is to stand up, rise up, to work together, and we certainly need to resist.
