Explainer: What Is Gender Apartheid?

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) Many human rights organisations, women's rights activists and some diplomats, including in the UN, are using the term gender apartheid to describe the current situation of women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran. Swissinfo looks at what it means and the campaign to get it recognised as an international crime. This content was published on December 20, 2025 - 10:00 6 minutes

Julia is a widely travelled British radio and print journalist, specialized in African affairs and transitional justice.

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What constitutes gender apartheid?

Gender apartheid is not yet recognised as a crime against humanity, although gender persecution is. Apartheid is recognised, but only on the grounds of race, since it was defined in the context of South Africa. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines apartheid as inhumane acts“committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime”.

According to Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, if the word racial were replaced with gender, this definition would apply to the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Activists are also applying the term gender apartheid to the situation of women and girls in Iran.

“First, it requires the existence of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination, and second, it is a crime of special intent,” explains Sareta Ashraph, an international criminal lawyer specialising on gender crimes and faculty member of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.“It requires the perpetrator, when committing an inhumane act, do so with the intent of maintaining that regime of systematic oppression and domination – in the case of gender apartheid, one gender group over another gender group or groups.”

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