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** SPOTLIGHT
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Gender apartheid in Iran and Afghanistan

This week, Iranians and people around the world mark the tragic anniversary of the death of Mahsa Jhina Amini ([link removed]) . Amini was arrested in 2022 for not wearing a headscarf, tortured and died in custody, prompting Iranians to take to the streets – starting what we now know as the Woman Life Freedom movement.

The nationwide uprising was groundbreaking, and sparked solidarity protests around the world. In Iran, the authorities’ crackdown was brutal and horrific, with hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including dozens of children, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. While the movement has not changed laws in Iran, it has brought change.

People in Iran speak of the small, but very real shift in everyday life ([link removed]) . Many say it has sparked a quiet revolution built on loss.

Now, Iranian activists are a key driving force behind a powerful campaign for gender apartheid – the institutionalised oppression of women based on gender – to be recognised as a crime against humanity.

In our latest podcast, journalist and producer Jo Glanville talked to Professor Karima Bennoune, Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and former UN rapporteur in the field of cultural rights. She described her push, alongside courageous campaigners ([link removed]) in Afghanistan and Iran, for gender apartheid to be included in a new UN treaty on preventing and punishing crimes against humanity. 

‘All one has to do is look at Afghanistan under Taliban control to see the archetype situation of gender apartheid,’ said Professor Bennoune. ‘That is, women being excluded systematically across infrastructures of the state – cultural, political, social, economic life, all aspects of life – and segregation of women in a variety of ways.’

Both Iran and Afghanistan are run by regimes that use systematic oppression as a strategy to maintain their power. In Iran, the mandatory hijab law segregates and discriminates against women; so do the bans on them in sport stadiums, and restrictions on what they can and cannot study.

With the profound shifts in the global political landscape, the ongoing escalation of conflicts, and the increasing weaponisation of language, the conversation about human rights in Iran has become somewhat ‘muted’, Bennoune says.

But that’s precisely why the campaign for gender apartheid to be properly recognised as an international crime is more important than ever. Finally seeing discrimination and repression of women for what it is – a form of apartheid – can help break through that silence.

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