'Gender apartheid' - risks and benefits

[ArabellaScott]

Recent calls for 'gender apartheid' to be made a crime against humanity.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/gender-apartheid-must-be-recognised-crime-against-humanity-un-experts-say

“State laws, policies and practices that relegate women to conditions of extreme inequality and oppression, with the intent of effectively extinguishing their human rights, reflect the very core of apartheid systems,” the experts said.

'existing forms of gender-specific crimes, including gender persecution, while useful and relevant, do not fully capture the institutionalised and widespread nature of the deprivation of rights involved in systems of gender apartheid. “Only the apartheid framework can fully grasp the role of intent, ideology and institutionalisation in gender apartheid regimes as seen in Afghanistan,” they said.'

The idea is that this would make it easier to criticise Afghanistan.

Are there any potential downsides? Will it actually help the situation?

They could start by using the word sex. Clear, unambiguous language should be the starting point. I can see huge opportunities for bad actors to exploit this.

It depends if Afghanistan want or need to be part of the world community. It will be a legal definition so it's easier to take action against them. We had a worldwide ban on SA for example in order to exert pressure on them.

"The articles currently under consideration provide a unique and crucial opportunity to galvanise international legal condemnation and action against gender apartheid,”

They should be using the word sex. Not gender. There are a myriad of different genders and none of the women in Afghanistan have identified into their oppression, it is sex-based not gender-based.

The word sex would be more helpful. The word gender makes me think this is a move intended to recruit women into unwittingly advancing the rights of men who say they are women at the expense of women.

Would single sex spaces be reframed as segregation and be covered by anti gender apartheid policy?

I think using our understanding of South Africa's apartheid framework to understand other instances of oppression can sometimes be extremely useful. I have a Saffer background myself and often find myself thinking: "Seen that before..." about things where others wouldn't.

But the wording of any actual law would need to be very careful indeed. If part of the process was to label things "apartheid", I think that will go horribly wrong.

a) Most of the time will be spent wrangling about whether word applies to any given case.
b) Countries which oppress women extremely won't give a shit anyway.
c) This sort of legal labelling is manna to people have other agendas entirely, don't give a shit about women, and will think Afghanistan a nice marketable example so they can get their Trojan horse through everyone else's gates.

I think immense amounts of (c) goes on – across very broad fields, not just in the ways often discussed on FWR.

Would single sex spaces be reframed as segregation and be covered by anti gender apartheid policy?

I imagine yes if single sex spaces were being used as part of an institutionalised system of discrimination, oppression and domination.

I think we have to live with the word gender in this context. It's the term used in lots of UN documents. This is high level stuff aimed at extreme situations. It's not just Afghanistan but Iran etc. It draws a line.
It goes hand in hand with this
https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/al-hassan-acquitted-of-gender-persecution-at-the-icc/#:~:text=While%20a%20welcome%20verdict%20for,Chamber%20to%20adjudicate%20the%20crime.

Nothing is perfect but without laws there's only despair.It may take time but I can't see any other alternative. Of course some will argue it would send Islamic dictatorships into the arms of Russia and China but I think they're already there.
The UK has a seat on the UN legal committee and they had better vote in favour.

I agree with previous posters about the necessity of using the word "sex".
I also query "apartheid" because while, in a just and equal society, there is no need to segregate people of different races, there would still be a need to segregate women and men at times. The problem is not institutionally treating women differently to men, it's treating women worse than men.

If this measure was to combat subjugation of the female sex, or some form of wording that was clear and upfront about the problem it is tackling, that it is about the treatment of women & girls (or, theoretically, in a different universe, the treatment of men and boys), then yes.
As a pp said, bad actors will exploit anything that isn't absolutely clear and unequivocal.

Are they thinking that the anti-apartheid movement was so popular and successful that they should borrow some of that lovely sparkly branding? Because this isn't apartheid is it? The whole point of things like apartheid and segregation was to cement the advantages of a dominant group by creating a 'separate but equal' fiction.

The men and women of Afghanistan do not live in separate townships. The men are committing specific crimes against the women for which the UN already has language. Calling it apartheid is obfuscatory.

The United Nations defines apartheid as a crime against humanity that involves the systematic oppression of a racial group and the use of inhumane acts to establish and maintain domination by one racial group over another.

As Gender Apartheid, that would be:

The United Nations defines Gender apartheid as a crime against humanity that involves the systematic oppression of women and girls and the use of inhumane acts to establish and maintain domination by men over women and girls.

Indeed, the @theilltemperedclavecinist .

With the additional kick that South African apartheid never was "separate but equal." That was an American slogan for Amercan racial segregation – a legal figleaf for services which were not, in reality, equal. (Indeed I think that was one of the ways US racial segregation was brought down: IIRC there was a legal case demanding that separate facilities be brought up to equal standards, and the cost of providing duplicate sets of equal services meant most service providers preferred to give up on the segregation instead.)

South African apartheid was brazenly, "Seperate because you're not equal."

poppyzbrite4

The definition is accurate about what is happening, but that is not what people understand when they hear the word apartheid. People who are opposed to single sex spaces claim they are examples of "gender apartheid". Nobody will actually read the definition, sadly.

I stand corrected. That's a pretty good definition of the patriarchy in action. I still wonder if it could cause confusion because of the strong associations with the ZA situation. I want to see the 'inhumane acts' front and centre rather than have people headscratching about where the segregation comes into it.

ETA Snowypeaks said it much shorter!

I'm not sure why Apartheid has been reduced to 'segregation'. Even segregation in the States meant the lack of civil rights of black people.

Yes exactly. People will spend their time saying, "But apartheid involves segregation / colonialism / XYZ, and that element isn't present here."

So labelling it as such will cause discussions to dissolve into pointless wrangling, rather than it being an aid to communication.

This is my fear. The last thing we need is more ways to oppress women. There is no reason to use the word gender if they mean sex. This isn’t splitting hairs, it’s essential.

But people can say what they want, if they want to make a legal case, it will be dismissed.

I am taking my lead from Afghan and other Muslim women.I have been stunned by the blatant indifference to the eradication of women's human rights by the rest of the world. This is being treated as just taking business as usual a bit far by the world and media. We can't let it interfere with something as important as a cricket match.
https://ishr.ch/campaign/end-gender-apartheid/

We consider that such framing would:

1. Demonstrate solidarity with women and girls in Afghanistan, and their calls for the use of this terminology.
2. Reflect the heinousness of the Taliban’s inhumane acts and ‘institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination’ by men over women and girls (adapted from Rome
3. Statute definition of racial apartheid).
4. Help maintain the pariah status of the Taliban and safeguard against ‘normalisation’ of their inhumane acts or recognition of their illegitimate regime.
5. Increase pressure on States, international organisations, financial institutions and transnational corporations to take active steps to suppress, prevent, prosecute and end gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
6. Contribute to the development of customary international law so as to formally recognise the crime of ‘gender apartheid’ and ensure that, as a matter of principle there is not a lower level of condemnation, protection and accountability for institutionalised oppression and domination on the ground of gender than on the ground of race.

For this to work worldwide, it has to have support. There will be opposition anyway, why make it harder by using a word which is widely misunderstood and so inextricably linked to apartheid-era South Africa and the pre-civil rights era USA?

Because it's the same type of oppression as explained above. Instead of race, it's oppression based on sex. Apartheid is a legal definition.

The definition will be used by governmental and other bodies, hopefully to ostracize Afghanistan and exert pressure on it to force change. The Cricket body for example, will be hard pressed to accept a team from a nation committing crimes against humanity.

You're assuming way too much engagement and good faith, I'm afraid.

poppy

What I mean is that - as an example - CEDAW was ratified by Afghanistan 20 years ago. And yet here we are.

Well what do you suggest?

Isn’t ‘slavery’ already a crime against humanity?

What else do you call it when a distinct group of people are deprived of basic human rights including the right to work, the right to education, the right to leave home without their owner or his permission, parental rights, the right to decline sex etc. Or is ‘slavery’ only a term that may be used when males are subject to it?

The law isn't really for Afghanistan but to assert pressure on Afghanistan using the law.