Women and girls ‘facing apartheid’ in Afghanistan
Nelson Mandela’s widow claims world has been too soft on Taliban rulers
TALIBAN repression of Afghan women is a form of apartheid and the world must fight it with the same resolve, the widow of Nelson Mandela has said.
Graça Machel, the former first lady of South Africa and one of the world’s foremost women’s rights campaigners, said the Taliban should be “squeezed” to show that the world finds their discrimination unacceptable.
The international community had been too soft with the insurgents-turnedrulers, who had imposed severe restrictions on women, she said.
The Taliban have increasingly removed women and girls from public life since they overthrew Afghanistan’s internationally-backed government in August 2021. Girls are not allowed in secondary school or university. Women have been removed from government departments and banned from work in most sectors. They have been ordered to cover their faces in public and told they cannot travel long distances without a chaperone.
Ms Machel said: “It is a kind of apartheid, which is gender apartheid. I agree with that kind of definition.
“But more than the definition, it is for me to say the same vigour and the same persistence which was applied to fight apartheid should be applied in the case of Afghanistan.”
Her comments come as the international community debates whether to engage with the Kabul regime, or to isolate it, and what leverage it might have.
Ms Machal is a leading Mozambican politician and figure in the Elders group of statesmen and women offering their expertise to address global problems. She was married to Samora Machel, former president of Mozambique, and then later to Mr Mandela from 1998 to 2013. The Queen made her an honorary dame in 2007 because of her humanitarian work.
Ms Machal declined to suggest specific measures the international community might deploy against the Taliban, but said: “We need to find a creative way of engaging them and to challenge the Taliban to say... it’s unacceptable to discriminate simply because they are women.”
During the apartheid era, the world spent decades enforcing measures including boycotts and sanctions against Pretoria. She said: “The South African government of the time was forced to change with the application of different methods. There were very many methods used, to squeeze the government to a point where it had to accept that they needed to change.”
She said likewise the Taliban now had to realise the world found their repression unacceptable. “I think so far, what is being applied against them is too soft. They should be squeezed to understand the human family is not going to allow them to continue the way they are behaving.” Andrew Mitchell, international development minister, said pulling UK aid because of Taliban restrictions would “have a devastating effect on vulnerable women and girls and people who are starving”.