In this post, Mira Mookerjee reflects on the Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture Controlling women, controlling society: the politics of virtue in Afghanistan with Richard Bennett.
Since the Taliban regained power in 2021, girls and women in Afghanistan have been unable to attend secondary school and higher education, making it the only country in the world to actively ban girls’ education beyond primary school. This will have a significant long-term generational impact, as roughly 43% of Afghanistan’s population are under 15 years old.
What is unfolding in Afghanistan cannot be understood in isolation from broader questions of power, governance, and international response. This was highlighted by Richard Bennett, who was the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2010. During the lecture, Bennett emphasises how the current situation can only be described as gender apartheid.
Soon after seizing power, the Taliban dismantled most of the institutions meant to uphold human rights and accountability, including the constitution, the electoral commission and the human rights commission. In their place, a system of control has emerged. Restrictions on education sit within a wider architecture of exclusion. The Taliban have deprived women and girls of their fundamental rights, including the freedom of movement, education, work, healthcare, expression and access to justice.
In December of 2024, the ban extended to women studying in medical institutes, including trainee midwives and nurses. As Bennett emphasises, this decision and its consequences extend far beyond education, and will severely affect access to healthcare, particularly for women and girls. “The unparalleled situation in Afghanistan,” Bennett quotes, “is characterised by many Afghan’s as gender apartheid.”
While apartheid is recognised as a crime under international law in terms of race, there remains no equivalent legal recognition when it comes to gender. This gap exposes a fundamental weakness in legal and humanitarian frameworks that addressing systemic oppression.
In The International Obligation to Counter Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, Karina Bennounne defines gender apartheid as “a system of governance, based on laws and/or policies, which imposes systematic segregation of women and men and may also systematically exclude women from public spaces and spheres.” What is at stake, then, is not only access to education, but the broader question of who gets to participate in shaping society.
Women protesting against the regime have been brutally suppressed and punished through heavy-handed tactics such as intimidation, threats, torture, incarceration and arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, which have driven protests underground. Yet women and girls continue to resist the restrictions. For instance, two days after the Taliban imposed a ban on higher education for girls, more than 60 university lecturers protested and resigned from their positions, and Afghan women stood in front of Taliban gunmen and protested in the streets of Kabul and other cities, while many look to the internet to gain educational resources.
“I’m astonished by the determination of girls to continue pursuing education,” says Richard Bennett, “and I applaud the incredible efforts of providers of education to find opportunities for learning online, underground and on radio and TV. Those providers are giving hope, and filling an important gap, but they don’t replace the responsibility of the state to provide a comprehensive education.”
Bennett adds that “the lack of a clear unified response from the international community has already emboldened the Taliban. We cannot embolden them still further with continued inaction. We must not let history repeat itself.”
Further reading:
- Voices of resistance: Afghan women’s lived experiences under the Taliban’s ban on education – Central Asian Survey
- The Afghan women’s movement and gender apartheid: shifting the trajectory of international human rights law – Central Asian Survey
- The Situation in Afghanistan – International Criminal Court
- Malala Yousafzai at the Muslim World League International Conference on Girls’ Education – Malala Yousafzai
- Sanctuary Spotlight: Supporting Afghan Women to Continue Their Education – King’s College London
- Underground Schools in Afghanistan: Expanding Access to Education – Ideas Beyond Borders
- Right to Learn: Advancing Access to Education Globally – Right to Learn Afghanistan
- Areas of Study for Afghan Students – American Foundation for South Asia
- Providing Free Education for Afghan Women – Global University Systems
The Anthony Hyman Lecture series brings together scholars, opinion formers and policy makers with an interest in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia to reflect on issues of topical and regional interest. The lecture has been an annual event at SOAS since 2003 organised by SOAS Centre of Contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus with a reception sponsored by Central Asian Survey.
