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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.

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