In January 2024, six organizations, made a submission to the Gender Apartheid Inquiry, an examination of the situation of women in Afghanistan and Iran conducted by a U.K. Parliamentary Panel and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. The Gender Apartheid Inquiry aims to identify practical and meaningful steps to address rights violations and crimes against women and girls within existing legal frameworks, while also exploring how these acts fit into the concept of gender apartheid.

In this submission, Human Rights Watch highlights concerns about the human rights situation in Afghanistan. They briefly describe the human rights violations that women and girls face. They conclude that “the pattern of abuse against women and girls in Afghanistan amounts to the crime against humanity of gender persecution.”

The Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, MADRE, and the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) jointly filed this communication pursuant to Article 15 of the Rome Statute where they urged the Office of the Prosecutor (“OTP”) of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) to launch an investigation into gender-based crimes committed by foreign fighters in the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham/Greater Syria (“ISIS,” also known as “ISIL,” “Daesh,” or “IS”) against civilians in Iraq.