441-02386 (Foreign affairs)

WHEREAS:

• There are systemic, wide-scale and life-threatening discrimination and gender-based human rights abuses against women and girls in Afghanistan;

• Every aspect of Afghan women's lives are controlled and scrutinized through multiple edicts, decrees, instructions and rules designed to subjugate and erase women from the public sphere and public life;

• There is undeniable evidence that Taliban envision a society where the subjugation of women and girls, and violence against them, is normalized, and their intent is to enforce their discriminatory rules through the use of violence, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, sexual violence and executions;

• The Taliban regime amounts to rule centred on gender apartheid;

• Apartheid based on race is a violation of the UN Charter, and a convention exists that criminalizes it;

• Perpetrators of apartheid hold criminal responsibility and are subject to prosecution, and UN member states have obligations to respond when other states' practice apartheid, and member states can call upon the UN to suppress and prevent apartheid;

• Sex and gender-based discrimination and persecution are also violations of international law; and

• Gender apartheid specifically lacks a comprehensive international legal protection framework that protects women and girls from institutionalized gender-based discrimination.

THEREFORE:

We, the undersigned citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to:

• Demand international institutions and law recognize gender apartheid as a crime against humanity;

• Take effective, concerted action to adopt proactive policies and exert pressure on the Taliban and any regime that uses systematic gender apartheid, and take every available measure to not condone, ignore, or be complicit in gender apartheid;

• Urge the acceleration of the International Criminal Court's investigation of the Taliban, including for the persecution on the grounds of gender as a crime against humanity, began in 2017, to prosecute and bring perpetrators to justice; and

• Advocate for feminist principles and for universalism in human rights to be reflected in existing and emergent international law.