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54 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/colhr54 and id is 1 raw text is: THE INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATION TO COUNTER GENDER APARTHEID IN AFGHANISTAN Karima Bennoune* ABSTRACT Since they returned to power in August 2021, the Taliban are again imposing a regime of gender apartheid in Afghanistan in violation of international law, just as they did in the 1990s. Given that it is pervasively discriminatory, gender apartheid poses specific human rights problems requiring particular, heightened responses. A system of governance based on subordination of women institutionalizes sex discrimination across state political, legal, and cultural infrastructures. It necessitates different counter-strategies. This Article suggests conceptual architecture for analyzing and responding to this aspect of the current Afghan crisis. Specifically, the robust international legal framework that helped end racial apartheid should be urgently adapted to address gender apartheid and concert the responses of other states to it. * Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. From 2015-2021, she served as United Nations Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights. She conducted fact-finding missions in different regions of Afghanistan for Amnesty International in 1996 and 2005, and in her personal capacity in 2011. She thanks Megha Bhatt, James Brown, Hannah Cho, Katie Crawford, McKenzie Deutsch, Luiz Varjao Filho, Allison Fleming, Sarah Gamble, Allison Lim, Altamush Saeed, and Anna von Herrmann for excellent research assistance. In addition, she expresses her appreciation to all the Afghan human rights defenders who spoke with her. Penelope Andrews, Maureen Carroll, Nicolas Cornell, Daniel Crane, Stephanie Farrior, Felice Gaer, Lisa Gormley, Monica Hakimi, Catharine MacKinnon, Elham Manea, Ann Mayer, Julian Mortenson, Pragna Patel, Lisa Pruitt, Steven Ratner, Mathias Reimann, Michael Reisman, Henry J. Richardson III, Gita Sahgal, Mariz Tadros and Christina Whitman all generously offered helpful comments, for which she is grateful. Thanks are also due to Mary Anne Case and Tom Ginsburg, as well as the participants in the University of Chicago Law School Workshop on Regulating Family, Sex, and Gender, for constructive feedback.