Honourable senators, I stand today to join my colleagues Senator Omidvar and Senator Coyle to speak in support of Senator Ataullahjan’s Motion No. 139, which calls on the Government of Canada to recognize the Taliban regime’s erasure of Afghan women and girls from public life as gender apartheid.

I am privileged to be able to stand here today because it was only as recent as 1929 that Canadian women were found to be persons under the law — less than 100 years ago — and could be considered eligible to be appointed to the Senate and serve Canadians in this capacity.

I’m humbled because I am one of 53 women currently in the Senate out of 139 women who have ever been appointed since 1867.

As senators, we have a responsibility and an obligation to amplify the voices of those who are not heard, those who are under-represented, the marginalized and the overlooked. But more importantly, we can speak for those who do not have voices.

In the context of peace and security, giving women and girls the ability to fully engage in society and engage our voice at all levels of decision making helps to ensure a more peaceful and prosperous future for all.

Honourable senators, the women and girls of Afghanistan under the current Taliban regime have been barred from engagement in society and do not have a voice at all. These amazing women who — not five years ago — were integrated and engaged in all areas of their communities and societies have now been silenced.

Worse than that, women and girls in Afghanistan are being denied more than just their voice; they are being denied even the most basic rights and are barred from participating in civil society. They are being erased. Their very existence reduced to that of property and a restrictive life that focuses on child-bearing and servitude.

I want to share something with you. In April, I attended the International Forum for Women, Peace and Security in Kosovo. Various political and cultural leaders, academics, experts and members of various advocacy groups came together to discuss present and future threats to women’s security around the globe.

At this women, peace and security forum, a group of Afghan women were presented with the Presidential Medal of Courage by the President of the Republic of Kosovo, Dr. Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, recognizing the courage and activism of all Afghan women.

Among those present was Zahra Nader, an Afghan-Canadian journalist and editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a digital platform that covers human rights violations in Afghanistan focusing on women, the 2SLGBTQI+ community and environmental issues. She spoke of the broader delegation of Afghan women who received the award — all advocates for their rights in Afghanistan. They were invited to attend, but they were prevented from attending to accept the award in recognition of their work.

They were Adela Yadegar of Forum for Afghan Women, Mahnaz Baluch of the International Organisation for Migration, Negina Ahmadi of the Just for Afghan Capacity and Knowledge Institute and Freshta Yaqubi of the Organisation for Sustainable Aid in Afghanistan.

They were denied permission to travel to the summit. Do you know why? Because they did not have an appropriate male escort, as decreed by the Taliban regime and enforced by the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Even those who did manage to attend were still escorted by men, and thankfully these men were allies.

My fellow senators have focused very much on the different challenges that Afghan women and girls face, and I am now going to focus my comments on health care.

The recipients at this awards ceremony spoke about how under the Taliban women’s and girls’ access to basic medical care is extremely limited because of the requirement that they only be seen by women health care providers. But women have largely been barred from providing these services, thus creating a circular problem of access to health care.

Girls are prevented from attending schools after the age of 11, denying an estimated 20 million women and girls an education. Generations of women are barred from university studies. With an education that ends at 11 years of age, they face insurmountable barriers to accessing higher education even if it is desirable. Denied access to education, and without trained women nurses and doctors, where will future women health care providers come from? Better yet, how will women and girls be cared for?

The systemic exclusion of women from actively participating in health care while decreeing that women and girls can only access health care from women health care providers is how you basically and effectively deny these services and exert control over women. This will only lead to increased instances of otherwise preventable diseases and will result in premature death for women and girls. Can any of us imagine oneself, one’s mother, sister, wife or daughter being faced with this dire situation?

Honourable senators, as I have previously shared, I spent 13 months in Kabul in 2011 to 2012 as part of the Canadian contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, training mission in Afghanistan. I had the honour of working very closely with many esteemed and dedicated Afghan Army doctors, nurses and other health care professionals, both men and women. I led a team to assist them in re-establishing their medical and dental education training system, which was once a leader in that part of the world.

While there, I heard how, under the previous Taliban regime, that a once well-functioning medical education system was subjected to destruction whether it was the expulsion of women students; the destruction of medical textbooks that had any images of people or human patients in them; the obliteration of any training dedicated to women’s health care needs; the barring of the use of anatomy labs for education purposes; and, yes, it included the requirement for men or religious leaders to have the final say on whether certain life-saving medical procedures should proceed, which included Caesarean sections, and yes, women needlessly died then and we’re starting to see it happen again.

Further, gender-based violence continues unchecked with impunity under the Taliban regime. Victims of gender-based sexual violence and their families are shamed, shunned and vilified under Taliban rule. Afghan women and girls have no recourse to justice, and, worse, they are often imprisoned themselves if they complain or even try to get away.

Faced with being restricted from public spaces, denied the means for economic self-support and prevented from seeking justice, many Afghan women and girls are driven to take their own lives, out of despair and desperation.

In the time since the end of the previous Taliban regime and previous civil war, Afghan women were slowly but surely engaging in and having access to health care, justice and decision making they needed. There was hope for a better future, and it was of their own making.

But that hope is gone with this oppressive regime. I see it in the eyes of my new Afghan family here in Canada who were able to leave the country when Kabul fell, and I hear it in the stories of their families left behind. Over 20 years of progress in Afghan women’s human rights, engagement in society and empowerment continue to erode and be erased. As a result, more Afghan women and girls will live in quiet despair and they will die needlessly.

Canada has a policy framework that already exists to support this motion. By doing so, the government would be in keeping with Canada’s third National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, where there is an objective that very clearly states a focus on:

. . . reducing sexual and gender-based violence — including online — in conflict, post-conflict and humanitarian contexts, and ensuring perpetrators are held accountable . . . in Canada or abroad . . . .

Therefore, I believe it is incumbent on the Government of Canada to acknowledge the ongoing gender apartheid in Afghanistan, consistent with our commitments. We cannot allow this to be normal. We cannot ignore the coordinated attack by the Taliban on the human rights of Afghan women and girls.

A country stripped of the voices of women and girls can become a radicalized country, affecting not just regional but also global security.

Honourable senators, symbols, words — this motion — can serve to raise awareness of our sisters’ suffering in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. We must add our voices to the international condemnation of the Taliban policies of gender apartheid, and we can join together to foster hope for all these women and girls of Afghanistan who are resisting with every fibre of their being.

In closing, I’d like to go back to my recent experience in Kosovo. In her remarks, President Osmani described the women of Afghanistan and their struggle with a passage from the Afghan novelist Khaled Hosseini:

The mountains might crumble, the rivers might dry up, but you are a woman, and you will stand, you will endure.

Thank you, honourable senators, and thank you, Senator Ataullahjan, for this very important motion.

Honourable senators, it is now seven o’clock. Pursuant to rule 3-3(1), I am obliged to leave the chair until eight o’clock, when we will resume, unless it is your wish, honourable senators, to not see the clock.

Is it agreed to not see the clock?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Senator McPhedran, please continue.

Honourable senators, I think it’s about time that we have at least one man speak to this great motion that we have here. So far, I have only heard women speak. If somebody else has, I apologize. I did ask my office, so we’ll take that up with them when I get there.

I rise today to speak to my colleague Senator Ataullahjan’s critically important motion, which calls on the Government of Canada to recognize the erasure of Afghan women and girls from public life as gender apartheid.

I want to begin by acknowledging Senator Ataullahjan and all the work she has done to call our attention to the plights of women and girls living under oppressive regimes internationally. Many of us in this chamber remember that on November 21, 2012, Senator Ataullahjan travelled to Birmingham, England, on her own dime, walked into the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and met with Malala Yousafzai’s mother and father while Malala was in a nearby room recovering from two gunshot wounds. Malala’s story is well known.

In 2009, after speaking out in opposition to Taliban rules that forbade girls from attending school, Malala was shot in the head by an Islamist militant who boarded her bus to school and targeted her following a Taliban vote to kill her.

Malala was despised by the Taliban. She was repeatedly threatened, and yet, with unfathomable bravery, she stood her ground. Her story affected us all. Senator Ataullahjan used her platform as a senator and her ability to speak in their native tongue of Pashto to connect with Malala’s family in order to convey her respect and appreciation for Malala’s unparalleled courage, and to personally deliver the message that Canada stands with Malala and her fight for the rights of women and girls.

Senator Ataullahjan has kept the issue of women and girls living under oppressive regimes at the forefront of parliamentary discussions. She proposed and oversaw committee studies on the topic, has put pressure on the government to stop barring humanitarian workers from responding to crises in Afghanistan and has now brought forward this important motion at a critical time. As she noted in her speech introducing this motion, Pashtun women are fearless warriors. Senator Ataullahjan’s fearlessness, integrity and resolve on matters of injustice are emblematic of the Pashtun spirit, and Canada and those who depend on our support are better for it.

Malala has since been the recipient of numerous awards and honours. Her charity, the Malala Fund, has joined Afghan activists, legal scholars and human rights defenders to call on world leaders to recognize gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.

Malala knows all too well what it feels like to be denied the right to education. At the prestigious 2023 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in December, Malala used her speech to draw the world’s attention to the gravity of gender apartheid, and called for a global movement to end it.

Malala explained:

Girls kept out of school are experiencing depression and anxiety.

Some are turning to narcotics, attempting suicide.

No girl, anywhere in the world, should have to suffer this way.

If we, as a global community, accept the Taliban’s edicts, we are sending a devastating message to girls everywhere: that they are less human. That your rights are up for debate. That we are willing to look away.

Advocates for classifying the oppression of women and girls under this regime as “gender apartheid” describe the term as laws, decrees and policies that exclude girls and women from public life and spaces. It is a system that intentionally maintains institutionalized, systemic oppression and control of one gender group over another.

Today, in Afghanistan, girls cannot go to secondary school and women are forbidden to work or leave the house on their own, not even to go to a doctor’s appointment or a park. Since their takeover in August 2021, the Taliban has introduced more than 50 decrees that directly curtail the rights of women. Not a single one of these decrees has been reversed. It is clear that the Taliban’s vision for Afghanistan is to perpetuate an outright denial of women’s rights and personhood. In a quick and very methodical manner, the Taliban is tarnishing the humanity of women and girls in Afghanistan.

Allow me to briefly walk you through some of the decrees and directives targeting women. In the sphere of education, in August 2021, a ban on coeducation was instated, followed by an outright ban on girls attending high school one month later. In September 2021, women were banned from teaching at universities.

In January 2022, girls’ schools for the blind were closed, followed by a complete closure of all schools for girls in Grades 7 and up. In June 2022, female students in Grades 4 to 6 were ordered to cover their faces while commuting to school, or face expulsion. In August 2022, female university students were ordered to cover their faces in classrooms.

In October 2022, women were blocked from choosing agriculture, mining, civil engineering, veterinary medicine or journalism as their university major, as the Taliban deemed these subjects “. . . too difficult for women to handle.”

Two months later, in December 2022, female students were banned from all public and private universities until further notice. Institutions were then directed to only admit male students in the forthcoming academic year, and were banned from issuing transcripts and certificates for female university graduates.

In June 2023, foreign NGOs were banned from providing educational programs, including community-based education. According to UNICEF, the directive impacts roughly half a million students and, specifically, 300,000 girls. In terms of decrees surrounding employment, one day at a time, sector by sector, the Taliban began forbidding women to work or obtain employment, even remotely.

For perspective, prior to the Taliban takeover, there were 69 female parliamentarians, over 250 female judges, hundreds of thousands of women-owned businesses, more than 100,000 women in universities and about 2.5 million girls in primary schools. Now, fewer than 7% of women participate in the labour force and only 2 in 10 primary school-aged girls are in school.

As for other areas of social engagement and participation, in 2021, women were banned from playing sports. In 2022, they banned women and girls from parks and gyms. In May 2022, women were instructed to observe the hijab. A UN report on this topic says:

In much of the Arab and wider Muslim world, “hijab” refers to a woman covering her head, but in Afghanistan, it tends to describe clothing that covers the head and body more fully. The DFA decree defined the hijab as either a burqa or “customary black clothing and shawl” . . . .

It also stated, however, that the Taliban “. . . indicated that the best hijab is for women to not leave their homes at all, unless absolutely necessary.”

In August 2022, they established a female moral police department, which replaced the Women’s Affairs Ministry. In 2022, women were banned from entering health centres or doctors’ offices without a male family member. One year later, in May 2023, young and unmarried women were banned from going to health centres, doctors’ offices and shrines altogether in the province of Kandahar. In 2023, women were banned from restaurants.

Last month, a Washington Post opinion piece written by three international peace and security policy experts shed light on some early ramifications of denying health care access to women in Afghanistan. The authors stated:

Because of their diminishing educational and economic prospects, women and girls are increasingly forced into early marriage, with families resorting to selling their elementary‑school-aged daughters to put food on the table. As many as 9 of every 10 of these child brides will experience gender‑based violence, and many will be placed at further risk because of Taliban-imposed obstacles to health-care access. Today in Afghanistan, one woman dies every two hours during childbirth, and birth control has been banned. These conditions exacerbate the grave humanitarian crisis in a country full of war widows.

In February of this year, a multi-agency UN report was released, shining a light on the increased level of fear among women following the growing erosion of their rights in Afghanistan. Beginning one year after the Taliban took power, three UN agencies — UN Women, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan — began publishing quarterly consultations with diverse Afghan women. Participating in the latest survey were 745 women across all 34 provinces, and the reported trends were disturbing, to say the least. Some of the key findings were as follows: over half of women — 57% — felt unsafe leaving the house without a male family member; only 1% of women indicated they had “good” or “full” influence on decision making at the community level — a stark decrease from 17% in January 2023; and inside the home, when it came to women’s “good” or “full” influence on household decision making, that number drastically decreased from 90% in January 2023 to 32% in January 2024. Tragically — yet perhaps not surprisingly — this suggests that as their ability to receive an education and work was taken away, their power in the home declined steadily as well.

According to the report, women described the intergenerational and gendered impact of Taliban restrictions and the accompanying shifts in social attitudes on children. Boys appeared to be internalizing the social and political subordination of their mothers and sisters, reinforcing a belief that they should remain in the home in a position of servitude. Girls’ perceptions of their prospects were changing their values alongside their understanding of their future possibilities. Women who were surveyed indicated they were worried that exposure to misogynistic policies was creating a perception among men and boys that women and girls have neither capacity nor need for social, political or economic opportunities.

As for the motion itself, when we make a statement as important as this — either as a chamber or as a government — getting the wording right is essential. Senator Ataullahjan has chosen the term “erasure” to describe what is happening to women and girls in public life in Afghanistan. “Erasure” is, indeed, a very strong word. We live in an era of hyperbolic language, but in this case, I believe this term is accurate. It is important to not water down the experience of Afghan women or the intent of the Taliban.

Likewise, the term “apartheid” holds tremendous legal and historical significance. While it has been misused in recent years — recklessly thrown around as a mere insult by some politicians and reporters — the term has a clear definition in international law. The development of apartheid standards in international law was designed to address racial apartheid. The term “apartheid” came from the Afrikaans word for “apartness,” which described the methodical racial segregation and oppression of South Africa’s Black majority from 1948 to 1994. The widespread and persistent international response resulted in its recognition as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Apartheid describes inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing domination of one group over another. Motions like the one before us are brought forward as part of a larger effort to include gender apartheid as part of the international framework.

The reality is that women in Afghanistan are being prevented from participating in any form of public life. The oppressive decrees instituted by the Taliban and the broader legal systems they belong to seek to establish and maintain women’s subjugation to men and the state. Violation of these laws can lead to violence, imprisonment and death. Some have described women and girls in Afghanistan as living as second-class citizens, while others have referred to their treatment as an extreme or severe form of gender discrimination. But this does not go far enough. As End Gender Apartheid states:

The situations in the Islamic Republic of Iran and under the Taliban in Afghanistan are not simply cases of gender discrimination. Rather, these systems are perpetuating a more extreme, systematic and structural war against women designed to dehumanize and repress them for purposes of entrenching power.

While apartheid is recognized in international law as a crime against humanity, gender is not currently included in the official definition. Thus, there is limited ability or recourse available to challenge the Taliban’s actions.

UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Richard Bennett described the reality facing Afghan women as “. . . the most comprehensive, systematic, and unparalleled assault on the rights of women and girls. . . .” Importantly, he called it “an institutionalized framework of gender apartheid.”

The first step for organizations and nations who stand with the women of Afghanistan is to raise awareness about the experiences of Afghan women and the increasingly oppressive structures the Taliban has imposed upon them. Our colleagues Senator Ataullahjan, Senator McPhedran, member of Parliament Garnett Genuis and others have done an exceptional job of raising awareness and ensuring this issue remains a priority.

The next step is for governments to acknowledge that what is occurring in Afghanistan is, in fact, gender apartheid. This motion is an initiation of this important step for the Government of Canada. The government’s acceptance of this Senate motion would bolster any efforts to make the required change in international law, with the ultimate goal of holding the Taliban accountable with the hopes of making meaningful change in the lives of Afghan women and girls.

The Taliban are on a relentless mission to erase women from the political, economic and societal discourse of Afghanistan. The news stories we continue to see are horrific. We have seen reports of the Taliban lashing women in front of hundreds of spectators and beating men for allowing their female relatives to wear bright clothing. We are seeing a piece-by-piece eradication of nearly every right women have fought for, forcing them out of society and into their homes, where many live in a constant state of fear.

The Taliban’s systematic campaign against women and girls aims to eliminate their autonomy by stripping away fundamental rights such as freedom, employment and education, while also employing ruthless tactics like harassment and the arresting and detaining of female protesters.

In the words of Nayera Kohistani, a former teacher and protester who was arrested and detained by the regime, “The Taliban have criminalized our whole existence.”

What is equally troubling is that this pervasive ideology is starting to poison the minds of future generations. Young boys are beginning to think women have no place outside the home, and young girls have lost their ability to dream of a future.

Colleagues, it is no secret to anyone in this chamber that I am a proud grandfather. Watching my six granddaughters pursue their dreams has been one of the great joys of my life. I feel so privileged to get a front-row seat to watch these incredible young women live the lives they aspire to. One is actively pursuing a PhD; one has embarked on a successful career in business; one, as you know, is a very successful curler; another is making tremendous strides in competitive volleyball. One is a wonderful teacher whose greatest hope is to become a mother. And when that day comes, she will be able to look into that baby’s eyes and feel nothing but hope and optimism for the beautiful life that lies ahead. My youngest granddaughter has remarkable musical talents, and I have no doubt she will share that gift with the world.

My granddaughters grew up observing incredible role models and never had any doubt that they were full and equal members of society who possess the ability to build the life they want on their own terms.

As a grandparent, it is all the more devastating to consider the stark contrast of the daily lives of girls of the same age in Afghanistan, girls who want nothing more than to go to school, to live freely without the threat of violence and to dream. Of all the evil the Taliban have inflicted on the regions they control, robbing young girls of the ability to dream is, to me, among the most heartbreaking.

It’s time for us to act.

Colleagues, I encourage you all to support this motion so that Canada can begin to do its part in our shared goal to end the Taliban’s war on Afghan women and girls. Thank you, colleagues.

Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to.)