The University of Michigan Law School will host a conference on ending gender apartheid in Afghanistan and beyond on Sept. 18.
Organized by Professor Karima Bennoune, a leading scholar on the topic and a former United Nations special rapporteur, the event—”Countering Gender Apartheid with International Law: A Strategic Convening”—will discuss ways to strengthen the emerging international legal concept of gender apartheid.
The aim of the meeting is to support the efforts of frontline women’s rights defenders and their international allies in challenging systems of institutionalized discrimination and oppression of women—such as in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The conference is free and open to the public; an online option will also be available.
Gender apartheid refers to a mode of governance that imposes systematic segregation on women and may also systematically exclude women from public spaces and spheres. Its perpetrators view women, as one Afghan rights advocate said, as being “not as human as men.” Adapted from the international law on racial apartheid, the concept of “gender apartheid” emphasizes that such discrimination has been institutionalized, requiring concerted international legal strategies to end it.
“Since 2021, the Taliban have stripped Afghan women of most of their human rights—including the rights to education and to work—through hundreds of decrees,”
Bennoune said. “They have done all of this openly, in plain view of the entire world, posing difficult questions for the entire legal framework governing women’s rights.”
In response, conference organizers aim to support a more comprehensive human rights-based international legal approach to gender apartheid, as demanded by frontline women’s rights defenders. The goal is to pressure the Taliban and other perpetrators to end their systematic oppression of women and to ensure that the international community responds in ways that respect international law.
The meeting will also explore how to keep international work for women’s rights alive in the current moment, characterized by backlash and questioning of women’s fundamental rights by some actors, including in government, in the United States and elsewhere.
Speakers at the conference will include United Nations Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett and Sima Samar, former director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission; as well as other Afghan experts, and Professor Penny Andrews, the first Black woman dean of a law school in South Africa. The meeting will also feature video messages from Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and her fellow Nobel Laureate and human-rights activist Malala Yousafzai. The schedule is available here.
The public conference will take place from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18 in Room 1225 of Jeffries Hall, 701 S. State St. in Ann Arbor. Advance registration is not required to attend in person.
A live-stream option will be available via Zoom, which does require registration.
Organized by Professor Karima Bennoune, a leading scholar on the topic and a former United Nations special rapporteur, the event—”Countering Gender Apartheid with International Law: A Strategic Convening”—will discuss ways to strengthen the emerging international legal concept of gender apartheid.
The aim of the meeting is to support the efforts of frontline women’s rights defenders and their international allies in challenging systems of institutionalized discrimination and oppression of women—such as in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The conference is free and open to the public; an online option will also be available.
Gender apartheid refers to a mode of governance that imposes systematic segregation on women and may also systematically exclude women from public spaces and spheres. Its perpetrators view women, as one Afghan rights advocate said, as being “not as human as men.” Adapted from the international law on racial apartheid, the concept of “gender apartheid” emphasizes that such discrimination has been institutionalized, requiring concerted international legal strategies to end it.
“Since 2021, the Taliban have stripped Afghan women of most of their human rights—including the rights to education and to work—through hundreds of decrees,”
Bennoune said. “They have done all of this openly, in plain view of the entire world, posing difficult questions for the entire legal framework governing women’s rights.”
In response, conference organizers aim to support a more comprehensive human rights-based international legal approach to gender apartheid, as demanded by frontline women’s rights defenders. The goal is to pressure the Taliban and other perpetrators to end their systematic oppression of women and to ensure that the international community responds in ways that respect international law.
The meeting will also explore how to keep international work for women’s rights alive in the current moment, characterized by backlash and questioning of women’s fundamental rights by some actors, including in government, in the United States and elsewhere.
Speakers at the conference will include United Nations Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett and Sima Samar, former director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission; as well as other Afghan experts, and Professor Penny Andrews, the first Black woman dean of a law school in South Africa. The meeting will also feature video messages from Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and her fellow Nobel Laureate and human-rights activist Malala Yousafzai. The schedule is available here.
The public conference will take place from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18 in Room 1225 of Jeffries Hall, 701 S. State St. in Ann Arbor. Advance registration is not required to attend in person.
A live-stream option will be available via Zoom, which does require registration.
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