Institutionalised Subordination and Structural Femicide: Gender Apartheid, State Responsibility and International Law in Afghanistan and Iran

This paper examines whether the systematic exclusion of women and girls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and the regime of compulsory control maintained by the Islamic Republic of Iran, amount to “gender apartheid”, and how such institutionalised subordination generates conditions of structural femicide. Drawing on the Rome Statute, the Apartheid Convention, CEDAW, the ICCPR and the law of State responsibility, it argues that although gender apartheid is not yet a codified crime, existing law, above all the crime against humanity of gender persecution, already reaches much of the conduct at issue, as the International Criminal Court’s warrants against four senior Taliban officials, unsealed on 5 October 2026, confirm. It evaluates the ongoing negotiations on a crimes against humanity convention and concludes that codification remains valuable for its expressive, preventive and diagnostic functions. The study is current to 8 October 2026.