Afghan and Iranian Women are a Force in the Fight for Freedom

Afghan and Iranian women are some of the most prominent voices working to advance freer and fairer futures in their countries. But women-led efforts often face significant barriers to financial support and capacity-building tools to aid the advancement of their objectives.

Funding for female-led movements remains woefully inadequate, especially when weighed against the return on investment – not simply for communities and countries, but global security and prosperity, as well.

Sadly, less than 1% of both foundation grants and official development assistance are accessible to women’s-rights efforts, according to a 2021 analysis from the Association for Women’s Rights in Development

In Afghanistan, women-led nonprofits have struggled to access even basic funding support since the Taliban’s return to power, according to analysis from Princeton University’s Afghanistan Policy Lab. In 2022 alone, 77% of women’s organizations operating in Afghanistan didn’t receive funding from the international community, UN Women estimates.

Funding gaps have impeded the convening capacity of women-led organizations and grassroots movements, especially their ability to meaningfully engage allies and mobilize the greater inclusion of men and other diverse participants.

Lastly, public and private sector institutions should do all they can to nurture and support the camaraderie between Afghan and Iranian women and their coordinated efforts to expand collective advocacy. Their strength, solidarity, and celebration of shared culture in the face of economic crisis, conflict, humanitarian catastrophe, and human rights atrocities is nothing short of inspiring. It should be leveraged into convening and capacity building opportunities.

Accountability and consequences remain sorely lacking in response to some of the most egregious violations of the rights of women and children in Afghanistan and Iran, despite a growing list of country-specific legislation and international resolutions.

Time and again, tyrants and extremists have held the rights and well-being of women, children, and other marginalized groups hostage, with few repercussions from the global community. Too often, leniency and loopholes within international systems allow regimes to bypass consequences, even in instances where penalties may exist.

Focused pressure and consequential follow-through remain two of the most underutilized mechanisms available to hold both the Taliban and the Islamic Republic of Iran to account for widespread human rights abuse.

This includes but is not limited to the use of both new and existing legal tools – like the Global Magnitsky Act – to confront and curtail the ability of officials and loyalists within these regimes to profit from gender persecution and human suffering, safeguard their assets, and expand their influence abroad. The Global Magnitsky Act allows the United States government (and more than 30 other countries that have similar legislation) to impose targeted sanctions and visa bans on individuals responsible for corruption, kleptocracy, and human rights abuses.

Equally important is the need for greater coordination, mobilization, and pressure to eradicate opportunities that afford these regimes normalization and validation, and/or and platforms for visibility and propaganda.

For example, the Taliban have regularly sought participation at Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) gatherings, most recently traveling to the Gambia for the 15th annual meeting May 4-5, 2024. And, in November 2023, a Taliban official participated supposedly as an invited attendee at a World Health Organization event hosted in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained its seat on the U.N.’s Human Rights Council and its ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva was nominated and selected to chair the most recent UNHRC Social Forum in November 2023 – even though the country was rightly removed from the Commission on the Status of Women in 2022. The U.N. allowed the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to remain as the 2023 forum chairperson, despite protests from the United States and other countries.

These moves in the halls of power have occurred at the same time the Islamic Republic has directly violated the UNHRC’s member code – including with the torture, arbitrary detention, and execution of protestors. These are some of the many “gross and systematic violations of human rights” perpetrated by the regime. The U.N. General Assembly should vote to remove Iran from the UNHRC, as the body recently did with Russia, but coordination and mobilization have so far been lacking.

The Taliban and the Islamic Republic use every opportunity they can to project propaganda, seek or fortify legitimacy, and refine and amplify their image on the world stage.

From international summits to local, regional, and international sporting competitions, these regimes regularly seek highly visible social forums in an attempt to validate and project their ideology and oppression. And they are concerningly successful.

For example, the World Economic Forum’s Davos summit in 2024 provided a platform to Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s Foreign Minister, despite his close ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

International and regional sporting bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the international soccer governing body FIFA must not allow the Taliban and the Islamic Republic opportunities to present their propaganda on the world stage. But this continues to occur even as Afghan and Iranian female athletes are punished and/or barred from international competition, and male athletes threatened for demonstrating support for their female peers. All of these actions are a direct violation of fundamental principles and existing codes of conduct.

These and other examples need to stop unless these regimes demonstrate meaningful progress when it comes to respect for fundamental rights and civil liberties. Every time these regimes have the ability to leverage global platforms it offers unintended legitimacy to their criminal actions.

Cricket Australia is currently the “only sporting organization in the world to formally sanction contact with Afghanistan in reaction to its treatment of women and girls generally, and the ban on women playing sport in particular,” according to an April 2024 article by Lynne O’Donnell.

In addition to country-specific exclusion, there are ways the international community can isolate bad actors while minimizing the effects on civil society in these countries.  For example, Russia and Belarus are officially banned from competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics, but the IOC is permitting athletes to participate with “individual neutral status.”

Across both Afghanistan and Iran, women and girls regularly endure abhorrent violations of even their most basic human rights.

Organizations like Rukhshana Media, DROPS, the Siamak Pourzand Foundation, and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center courageously continue to document the experiences of vulnerable populations and the abuses of power by the Taliban and the Islamic Republic but need increased support.

The Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic in Iran are ruthlessly intent on using propaganda, disinformation, and censorship to counter criticism and dissent. This includes embracing the support of fellow authoritarians (like China) to restrict information access and target and silence independent media, advocacy campaigns, and data collection efforts.

Gender apartheid should be recognized as a crime against humanity within international and national legal frameworks.

Gender persecution in Afghanistan and Iran is systematic and strategic. Through omnipresent and unrelenting dehumanization efforts, the Taliban and the Islamic Republic continue to capitalize on the suffering and subjugation of more than half of their populations. This includes discrimination and segregation based on gender within most facets of public life.

These policies of gender-based oppression closely parallel the abhorrent racial discrimination that existed in South Africa and the territory of South West Africa (now Namibia) for over 40 years.

But despite the strong comparisons, the global community has yet to formally expand the definition of apartheid beyond race to reflect other extreme forms of institutionalized discrimination and exclusion. This minimizes global responsibility and limits legal and multilateral mechanisms available to counter repressive regimes built on exploitation and subjugation.

Afghan and Iranian advocates have launched and courageously led efforts to codify and criminalize gender apartheid with organizations like End Gender Apartheid Today and United Against Gender Apartheid. Support and global solidarity are needed now more than ever, as the Taliban and the Islamic Republic expand their persecution of women and girls.

Afghan and Iranian women endure a significant burden as a result of autocratic actors. But very rarely are their perspectives included within high-level convenings. This includes congressional and other legislative hearings, international summits, and agency/ministerial briefings examining the worsening situations in Afghanistan and Iran.

For example, over the last three years, very few Afghan and Iranian women have been afforded an opportunity to provide testimony during both House and Senate hearings focused on deeply related issues in Iran and Afghanistan.

This needs to change, particularly given the Taliban’s continuous assault on the rights and well-being of female Afghans or the incredible momentum of the Women, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. The experiences of women and other marginalized communities provide a crucial and holistic examination of the haunting realities facing vulnerable populations living under the brutality of autocratic regimes.