Attachments
Human Rights Council
Fifty-sixth session
18 June–12 July 2024
Agenda item 2
Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General
The phenomenon of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan
Summary
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan provides an intersectional analysis of the establishment and enforcement of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls.
I. Introduction
1. In its resolution 54/1, the Human Rights Council requested the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, with the support of other relevant special procedure mandate holders and treaty bodies, to prepare a report on the phenomenon of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls.
2. As requested, the present report builds on the joint report submitted to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-third session by the Special Rapporteur and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls. 1 According to that report, the Taliban were perpetrating the most extreme forms of gender-based discrimination, with Afghan women describing the erosion of their rights as “the walls [closing] in”, leaving them “without hope”. The Special Rapporteur and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls determined that the pattern of large-scale systematic violations of women’s and girls’ fundamental rights in Afghanistan, abetted by the Taliban’s discriminatory and misogynist policies and harsh enforcement methods, constituted gender persecution and an institutionalized framework of gender apartheid, and provided detailed recommendations to the de facto authorities, States and the United Nations.
3. The Special Rapporteur’s subsequent human rights reports to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session and the Human Rights Council at its fifty-fifth session include updates on the worsening situation for women and girls.2
A. Objectives
4. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur provides a critical analysis of the institutionalized subjugation of Afghan women and girls, encoded in the Taliban’s gender-based system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for dignity and exclusion. As previously detailed,3 the consequence has been the rapid attrition of female autonomy and agency, and the erasure of women and girls from the public, political, economic, social and cultural life of Afghanistan.
5. The Taliban’s institutionalized system of discrimination is most visible through its relentless issuance and enforcement of edicts, decrees, declarations and orders that in and of themselves constitute severe deprivations of human rights and violations of international law. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur examines the way in which these commands interlock to form a countrywide system of oppression and abuse in which all communities in Afghanistan, particularly women and girls, find themselves ensnared.
6. Grounded in a gender-competent intersectional approach, the report illuminates harms, visible and obscured, as well as the transgenerational impact on different communities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Special Rapporteur recognizes the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as gender, religion and ethnicity, among other identities, and considers an intersectional approach essential to institute a more inclusive framework for identities that are often unrecognized or underrecognized.
7. The aim of the report, therefore, is to provide a multidimensional understanding of the design, commission and impact of the rippling harms wrought by the Taliban’s institutionalized system of gender-based oppression. While the impact on Afghan women and girls is its focus, the report emphasizes that the establishment and entrenchment of such a system leads to devastating and long-lasting harm to all genders, with implications extending well beyond the borders of Afghanistan that are likely to arise from poorly conditioned engagement with the Taliban.
8. This analysis rejects exclusionary binaries that primarily cast women and girls as victims, and men and boys as perpetrators. Afghan women and girls are owed full recognition of their agency, their courageous resistance and their indelible roles as beacons of progress and justice for Afghanistan.