Apartheid is still there: it is that of Afghan women – The appeal

Apartheid did not end in the early 1990s, it still exists in the 21st century and concerns half of the Afghan population, twenty million people: women. “Gender apartheid” is what a group of Afghan and Iranian leaders in exile call it, who together with international lawyers and other activists are calling for it to finally be recognized, for the definition of apartheid in international law to be interpreted in such a way as to include gender hierarchies , and not just ethnic ones.

The appeal (launched during the Festival du film et forum international sur les droits humains in Geneva (Fifdh), the most important event in the world dedicated to human rights, is addressed to all of us to put pressure on governments to ensure that, When the 78th session of the General Assembly meets in New York at the beginning of April to draft the new convention on crimes once morest humanity, the specific crime of “gender apartheid”, which is currently not taken into consideration, will also be included.

A term already used by Afghan women when the Taliban took power for the first time, from 1996 to 2001. “We do not consider ourselves victims even if we have been sacrificed” say some politicians, lawyers, journalists and activists from the country in the beautiful documentary An unfinished journeyby Aeyliya Husain and Amie Williams, screened as a world premiere at the Fifdh in Geneva, which documents the struggle of four Afghan leaders in exile, Nargis Nehan, Homaira Ayubi, Nilofar Moradi, Zefnoon Safi, to try to maintain the attention of the rest of the world on the fate of Afghan women, following – with the departure of American troops – Kabul fell on 15 August 2021 and the Taliban took power once more, depriving them of fundamental rights.

“Reopening schools so that girls can return to attend them, allowing women to work once more, allowing them to move freely”: these are the most urgent rights to be restored, according to Nargis Nehan, former Afghan minister, now in exile in Canada . She was present at the first Genevan and her eyes, at the end of the screening followed by a very long applause from the audience, filled with tears, as did those of many people in the audience.

«If a man is educated he only changes himself, if a woman is educated she can change a family», «If women don’t work, what happens to them?», «Women are the most progressive inhabitants of Afghanistan», are some of the phrases spoken in the documentary which shows the killing of leaders who remained in Afghanistan, the fear and suffering of the girls who have had all their rights taken away, even the right to go to school, the women who demonstrate with their faces uncovered once morest the Taliban, despite all the dangers they run, so that we can see their anger, and the life full of melancholy and apprehension for those who remained in their homeland of those who wanted and were able to escape. «There is not even a mention of women in the Doha agreements!» exclaims Nehan, referring to the 2020 peace treaty between the Afghan faction of the Taliban and the United States led by Donald Trump that led to the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent coup that overthrew the democratic government.