Two years of ever-intensifying repression since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 have not dimmed the resilience of girls and women in Afghanistan, who continue to risk their lives fighting for their right to an education and employment. But no one should be in any doubt that what Afghan girls are experiencing is not a temporary disruption. It is nothing less than “gender apartheid”, the chilling words used recently by the permanent representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations. Only a term as devastating as this can capture the grave violations of rights involved. It is time to declare it a crime against humanity, and the prosecutors of the international criminal court (ICC) should open an investigation into the repression ordained by the Taliban regime.
Even now, under fear of arrest, detention and torture for transgressing the Taliban’s rights-violating edicts, brave children across Afghanistan are attending underground schools. A major initiative on internet learning in universities has also recently started, with support from the refugee agency UNHCR and the consortium Connected Learning in Crisis. Many families have realised that the only chance of education for their daughters is through emigration. That still leaves an estimated 2.5 million girls and young women with no education at all, and they will soon be joined by a further 3 million who are about to complete their primary education. Unable to move up to secondary school, yet another generation of Afghan girls will be denied a chance to realise their talents and fulfil their dreams.
Middle Eastern powers and Muslim-majority countries, from Pakistan and Turkey to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Iran, have joined the UN in condemning this regime of repression, with the UN citing texts from the Qur’an to assert that there is no religious justification for excluding girls and women from secondary schools and universities.
But sadly, worldwide support for their cause has so far been wholly insufficient to bring about a change of policy. With girls and women facing a new moment of peril, as Kandahar clerics demand that the UN terminate the roles of all women in its employment, the international community must mobilise in greater numbers and with renewed strength of purpose to condemn the violation of their rights. It is clear that the exclusion of women and girls from secondary and tertiary education violates international human rights treaties to which Afghanistan is a party.
These breaches start with the country’s failure to comply with the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW). The regime is also violating Afghanistan’s obligations under the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights and the convention on the rights of the child.
These breaches of binding international human rights law have been widely condemned. In his 2023 report, Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, observed that the Taliban continued flagrantly to contravene CEDAW, and demanded that they should “immediately restore equal access to quality education at all levels and in all courses for women and girls”.
Although Afghanistan has not ratified the relevant instruments that would enable victims of the violations to petition the treaty bodies, it can be held accountable for the ongoing violations by way of the reporting requirements and mechanisms under the treaties. These provide an opportunity for continued scrutiny of the Taliban’s actions and for calls on the Taliban to reopen secondary schools and universities.
But there is an even greater opportunity for legal action under international criminal law. In March, the UN recognised the right to education as an “enabling right, which is crucial in and of itself for realising other human rights”, and said that denying “this right to half the population effectively denies women and girls most other human rights”. It is arguable that the exclusion of women and girls from secondary and tertiary education, when considered alongside all the other restrictions imposed on them by the Taliban, may amount to persecution. As the special rapporteur has observed, “in no other country have women and girls so rapidly disappeared from all spheres of public life, or are they as disadvantaged in every aspect of their lives”.
Gender persecution is a crime against humanity, for which individual Taliban members may be liable to prosecution under the ICC’s Rome statute, to which Afghanistan acceded in 2003. The policy on the crime of gender persecution, issued by the ICC in December 2022, notes that “gender persecution severely deprives a person … of the fundamental right to be free from discrimination in connection with other fundamental rights deprivations, contrary to international law. For example, it may deprive a person of the right to … education.” The ICC prosecutor should consider gathering information from states, UN organs, NGOs and others to determine whether there is a case for prosecution.
Individual states could also act through their own domestic law frameworks to communicate their condemnation of the Taliban’s repression, for example through the imposition of sanctions against individual members of the Taliban.
The international community can – and should – use these legal frameworks, but there is yet more than can be done. First, we must show that education can get through to Afghan girls, by expanding the online and radio courses on offer from the rest of the world. This means recruiting more universities to offer online courses and schools to make their curriculums available online and through radio and TV.
Second, Education Cannot Wait, Unicef and others should be given the resources to step up their provision of educational opportunities for Afghan girls inside and outside the country, especially in Pakistan to which many Afghan families have emigrated.
Third, given the religious framework of the issue, we must agree on a high-powered delegation of Muslim-majority government leaders to Kandahar to engage the religious leadership on their approach to education for women. Fourth, for the sake of Afghan women and girls, we must be prepared to offer the Taliban government funding to finance their return to schools and universities, and promise that we will match the funding for education that was provided in the years from 2011 to 2021, as long as girls’ rights are upheld and education is free of indoctrination.
Afghan girls are protesting because they have known what it is like to be able to go to school and think and argue freely in classrooms. The millions of women who went through school and universities in the two decades before 2021 are the greatest advocates of education for all. Regimes can silence dissidents – but not for ever. They can censor books for a time – but the word will get through. They can deny girls opportunities – but no one should doubt that the spirit of the Afghan people will ultimately prevail in demanding that the girls who represent half their future are given a chance to flourish. It just has to happen soon.
