London: A campaign on International Women’s Day supported by prominent Afghan and Iranian campaigners is calling for gender apartheid to be classified as a crime under international law, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.
Launched through an open letter, the campaign calls for the expansion of racial anti-apartheid laws to include gender, which would pressure countries including Afghanistan and Iran to tackle systemic discrimination against women.
Signatories include international lawyers and high-profile political figures including Shirin Ebadi, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Fawzia Koofi, the first female deputy speaker of the Afghan Parliament; and Benafsha Yaqoobi, a commissioner on the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.
Apartheid, meaning “apart” in Afrikaans, described South Africa’s institutional racial discrimination during the second half of the 20th century.
But the term has been leveled at countries including Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians, and now the campaign has accused Afghanistan and Iran of practicing forms of gender apartheid.
The open letter points to the Taliban’s ban on women’s education, employment in NGOs and in government, as well as Afghanistan’s strict guardian laws preventing women from traveling alone for long distances.
Human rights lawyer Gissou Nia, who is supporting the campaign, said: “It is paramount to understand that gender apartheid currently only has power as a descriptive term.
“Under international law, the crime of apartheid only applies to racial hierarchies, not hierarchies based on gender.
“This campaign will seek to expand the set of moral, political and legal tools available to mobilize international action against and ultimately end systems of gender apartheid.”
The open letter says in Iran, “women are banned from many fields of study, sporting events, from traveling without a male guardian, are worth half a man under the law and are forced to wear a compulsory hijab.
“These bans, and the broader legal systems they belong to, seek to establish and maintain women’s subjugation to men and the state. Violation of these laws can lead to violence, imprisonment and death.”
The signatories say the campaign will avoid imposing Western cultural values on Muslim societies worldwide, instead focusing on systemic policies that discriminate against women outside the bounds of religion.
