“I feel like they want to erase us — not just from public life, but from history,” a girl in Afghanistan told me. Afghan women live under a deliberate and structured system of state-sanctioned violence.

I was talking with Afghan women leaders and activists as part of my Ph.D. research at the University of Pittsburgh and what I saw is not merely discrimination. It is a campaign to erase half of a nation from education, work and public life.

My ask is clear: the international community must formally recognize gender apartheid under international law and take immediate action to end the systematic oppression of Afghan women.

Cycles of repression

I write about this not only as a researcher or activist but as an Afghan woman whose life has been shaped by cycles of repression and resistance.

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