SA Spring 2024 Colloquium Series Part III

The International Obligation to Counter Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan

Guest Speaker: Professor Karima Bennoune, Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School

Abstract:
In her remarks, Professor Karima Bennoune will address the imperative to respond to calls by many Afghan women human rights defenders for recognizing that gender apartheid is being practiced in Afghanistan, as well as the added value of the gender apartheid concept, its history, examples of its increasing use, and suggestions for ways forward.

About the Speaker:
Professor Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. She served as the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2015-2021. Bennoune was also appointed as an expert for the International Criminal Court in 2017 during the reparations phase of the groundbreaking case The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, concerning intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites by extremists in Mali. A former legal advisor for Amnesty International, she has carried out human rights missions in most regions of the world. She has been on three missions to Afghanistan, visiting different regions of the country: in 1995, 2005 and 2011, and has worked closely with Afghan women human rights defenders for many years, including during the 2021 evacuations.
Karima is the author of “The International Obligation to Counter Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan” which appeared in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review in December 2022 and has been translated into Farsi by the Afghanistan Institute for Strategic Studies. In September 2023, she spoke in the UN Security Council about gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Subsequently, she travelled to South Africa with Malala Yousafzai to take part in a panel on gender apartheid with the Nobel laureate after her December 2023 Nelson Mandela lecture.

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