Our new Gender Apartheid Brief tracks accountability pathways, state action and legal strategies for Afghan women and girls. You can subscribe to receive future issues on LinkedIn.
Dismantling gender apartheid
For decades, Afghan women have demanded accountability, human rights and justice amid conflict, repression and cycles of international intervention that have shaped power, law and responsibility in Afghanistan. Long before 2021, they documented abuses, engaged international legal frameworks, developed community-based forms of redress and challenged systems that denied women legal recognition and protection. Never singular or linear, this work has moved across human rights advocacy, feminist legal strategy, evidence preservation and restorative approaches grounded in lived experience and expertise.
Since the Taliban’s return, these efforts have intensified and converged into a broader accountability ecosystem. Afghan women are confronting not only individual violations, but a systematic regime of domination imposed on women and girls, even as political hostility toward Afghan refugees and migrants has intensified in many parts of the world.
Malala Fund’s Gender Apartheid Brief tracks this accountability ecosystem and the legal, policy and normative pathways within it. It focuses on how distinct pathways forged by Afghan women — including tribunals, investigative bodies, international courts and treaty-related processes — reinforce one another, and how they contribute to the long-term effort to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity under international law.
We aim for this brief to be a working resource for those fighting for justice for the women in Afghanistan. Accountability is cumulative, evolving and sustained over time. This publication follows how that work is advancing today and where it may lead.
What our first brief covers:
⚖️ Key accountability developments
📚 Core resources on codifying gender apartheid
💻 A partner spotlight on evidence-building and documentation
How to use this brief: Amplify our movement for justice
This brief tracks a movement shaped by sustained leadership, legal strategy and collective effort. As accountability pathways advance, continued engagement matters.
Use this brief to track which pathways are generating:
Evidence - documentation designed for legal use
Legal framing - interpretations that clarify what the system is and why it matters
State pressure - signals that move beyond sympathy to legal action
Accountability is not built in isolation. It grows through connection, persistence and sustained engagement over time.
Where we stand this quarter
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women and girls have faced an institutionalised system of exclusion, punishment and control that reaches across public and private life. The result is a systematic — and escalating — campaign of oppression.
In response, Afghan women inside and outside Afghanistan have built an accountability ecosystem spanning legal pathways, evidence-building and documentation, and international advocacy.
These efforts stand as significant achievements in their own right — reflecting Afghan women’s leadership and the support of allies around the world — and together form an increasingly interlocking accountability ecosystem:
A clearer legal story is emerging through people-led processes that assemble evidence and interpretation where formal avenues are limited.
A stronger evidence pipeline is taking shape as documentation is increasingly collected for legal use, not only advocacy.
A state pathway under CEDAW continues to develop toward the ICJ, even as procedure slows momentum.
A criminal accountability track at the ICC is reinforcing the scale and intent of persecution through individual arrest warrants.
Below is a snapshot of the four pathways and their latest developments.
1. The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan
In December 2025, The People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan found the Taliban responsible for the crime against humanity of gender persecution. It also found that the Taliban’s institutionalised system of gender-based domination meets the constitutive elements of an apartheid-like regime, and underlined the urgency of recognising and codifying gender apartheid as a distinct crime under international law to fully capture this system of domination.
People’s tribunals have historically emerged where formal judicial avenues are blocked or inaccessible. They establish factual records, develop legal reasoning and articulate claims that international law has yet to fully recognise. From the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam to feminist tribunals addressing violence against women, such processes have helped shape legal norms later taken up by courts, treaty bodies and states.
Afghan women, including lawyers, activists and survivors, led this tribunal: they designed the process, gathered evidence and framed the legal questions at its core. Applying established principles of international law, the tribunal examined the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls as systematic gender persecution and structural discrimination.
2. Independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan
In October 2025, the U.N. Human Rights Council established an independent investigative mechanism for Afghanistan to address a critical gap: the systemic collection, preservation and analysis of evidence of international crimes, including the Taliban’s systematic violations of women and girls’ rights. Its mandate is to prepare evidence for use in future proceedings before courts with jurisdiction.
The mechanism reflects sustained advocacy by Afghan women and civil society. It complements existing U.N. mandates, including that of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, by focusing on forensic documentation rather than monitoring and reporting alone.
By recording patterns of discrimination and repression as systematic and institutionalised, it offers a solid evidentiary foundation for accountability efforts, including those advancing the codification of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity under international law.
3. International Court of Justice (CEDAW pathway)
In September 2024, Australia, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands announced that they were taking formal steps under the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to hold the Taliban accountable for its treatment of women and girls. Their aim is to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N.’s highest court for disputes between states.
If the case proceeds, it would mark the first time the ICJ is asked to consider state responsibility specifically for gender discrimination under CEDAW in this context. Before that can happen, states must complete a period of dialogue required by the convention, which makes the process slow and still underway.
Afghan women and civil society advocates have played a central role in sustaining momentum — engaging with governments and international partners and pressing for the case to advance. This pathway matters because it could clarify legal responsibility for systemic discrimination against women and girls, strengthen global accountability norms and reinforce the legal case for recognising gender apartheid under international law.
4. International Criminal Court
In July 2025, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders, marking a significant step toward individual criminal accountability. The warrants recognise the seriousness and intentional nature of the Taliban’s persecution of women and girls and treat these acts as more than isolated violations.
While the ICC is focused on individual criminal responsibility, its approach is significant in the broader legal ecosystem. By addressing gender persecution as systematic and deliberate, the ICC's proceedings can shed light on the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls as part of an institutionalised regime of discrimination.
Together with other accountability pathways, the ICC process helps strengthen the overall legal case for accountability and supports ongoing efforts to articulate and codify gender apartheid under international law.
The goal: Codifying gender apartheid
The accountability mechanisms highlighted above represent a shared push toward justice for women and girls in Afghanistan — but a critical gap remains. International law does not yet recognise gender apartheid as a crime.
In recent years, Afghan women have advocated for the codification of gender apartheid through the U.N.’s Crimes Against Humanity Treaty process. As governments begin to engage more visibly, codification is becoming a site of diplomatic positioning: officials may express support while avoiding binding commitments.
As this process evolves, the End Gender Apartheid tracker documents how states are participating and their positions — from public statements to diplomatic engagement — as the movement to recognise gender apartheid gains traction.
Afghan women are also building global solidarity with civil society movements in other contexts, learning from histories of resistance under systems of exclusion and domination. South Africa has become an important point of connection, as a liberation movement that dismantled an apartheid system and which continues to grapple with its political, legal and social legacies.
In a series of articles, Afghan advocate Farhat Ariana Azimi reflects on conversations between Afghan activists and South African civil society actors, exploring what it means to resist, organise and pursue justice during and after apartheid. These exchanges are grounded reflections on endurance, collective struggle and the long, uneven work of turning liberation into lasting change.
This month, U.N. member states are meeting as the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the Crimes Against Humanity treaty process moves into its next phase. These essential readings explain how Afghan women began this movement and how they define gender apartheid.
From Gender Apartheid to Non-Sexism: The Pursuit of Women’s Rights in South Africa — Penelope E. Andrews provides a historical and legal analysis of how apartheid was challenged and reframed in South Africa, tracing women’s rights struggles that inform contemporary debates about systemic discrimination.
Legal Brief on the Codification of Gender Apartheid Under International Law — the End Gender Apartheid campaign explains the core legal framing and proposed pathways.
Legal Q&A on Gender Apartheid Codification — the End Gender Apartheid campaign addresses key legal questions and objections around codifying gender apartheid.
Recognition of Gender Apartheid Is Justified — Metra Mehran argues that recognising gender apartheid is legally justified and necessary for accountability.
"Ending Gender Apartheid: Afghan Women Are Leading. The World Must Follow" — Sahar Halaimzai outlines advocacy priorities led by Afghan women.
“The Taliban’s Treatment of Women Is Gender Apartheid. Governments Worldwide Must Act Now” — Sahar Halaimzai links the People’s Tribunal findings to the case for state action and legal recognition.
Partner spotlight: The Afghanistan Justice Archive
The Afghanistan Justice Archive (AJA), a public digital repository, has been documenting the Taliban’s systematic repression since August 2021. Developed by the Civic Engagement Project and led by Afghan experts, the archive brings together official Taliban decrees, legal analysis, training materials and first-hand accounts to preserve evidence and support international accountability processes.
Designed for lawyers, journalists, policymakers, activists and the wider public, the AJA provides credible, accessible documentation of an emerging system of legal authoritarianism and gender apartheid, ensuring this evidence remains part of the public record.
Subscribe + amplify the movement for justice
Subscribe to the Gender Apartheid Brief on LinkedIn for regular updates on accountability mechanisms, state action and efforts to codify gender apartheid under international law.
We also welcome contributions, ideas and updates from partners and allies. Please contact Gaisu Yari at gaisu@malalafund.org.
Beyond following this work, we encourage readers to engage directly with the organisations and initiatives featured throughout this brief, whose work sustains accountability efforts in practice.
In solidarity,
Sahar Halaimzai, Senior Director of Policy & Advocacy, Malala Fund