Malala Yousafzai at Skoll 2025: 'Gender apartheid' should be a crime

The world’s youngest Nobel prizewinner was among the star speakers at this week’s Skoll World Forum, where she highlighted a campaign to make ‘gender apartheid’ a crime – and warned that women’s rights everywhere could be vulnerable to attack by oppressive regimes. 

Malala Yousafzai, the education activist from Pakistan who, in 2012 at the age of 15, was shot by the Taliban for going to school, said that the plight of women in Afghanistan was “beyond just gender discrimination”. 

Under Taliban rule, girls and women are forbidden from secondary and higher education – just one of many extreme restrictions they face.  

“If you’re a woman in Afghanistan today, you cannot go to parks, you cannot go to the gym, you cannot drive… you cannot speak in public. You cannot be seen by male doctors, and most recently, women cannot train to become midwives and nurses,” said Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder of the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), speaking alongside Yousafzai in a panel discussion hosted by Mary Robinson, member of The Elders and former president of Ireland. 

This is systematic oppression at such a high scale that we need the right word to recognise it

Yousafzai is among those calling for gender apartheid to be recognised as a crime in international law. “This is systematic oppression at such a high scale that we need the right word to recognise it, and then hold the perpetrators like the Taliban accountable for it,” she said.

Yousafzai is also the executive producer of a 2024 documentary, Bread and Roses, which follows the lives of three women following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021. 

The story it tells “leaves you heartbroken”, she said. “But what’s far worse is realising that the situation has only worsened since this documentary was completed. The Taliban have issued more than 100 decrees and edicts taking away any possible right and opportunity that you could think of from women and girls.” 

The situation in Afghanistan should not be considered a “distant issue”, Yousafzai warned. 

“What really worries me is… the future of women and girls everywhere,” she said, adding that in any country – including the US and the UK – women’s rights were never guaranteed. “How vulnerable are we [if] tomorrow an oppressive regime takes control in our country? Everything can be taken back from us – from our body rights, to our right to work and education.”

Talented activists 

The Malala Fund, established by Yousafzai and her father in 2014, supports activists helping women and girls in Afghanistan to access education through alternative means, such as via radio programmes or messaging platforms like WhatsApp.  

“There are amazing, talented activists who are using everything that’s out there to make education accessible,” said Yousafzai. “The way we at Malala Fund think about it is: while the Taliban keep girls out of school, we need to do everything in our capacity to take education to girls’ homes. Let's make it impossible for the Taliban to stop a girl from learning.

“This is a form of resistance… when a girl just picks up a book and she’s learning, she feels that she’s fighting against this oppressive regime that is trying to do everything to stop her from learning, to stop her from following her dreams.” 

When a girl just picks up a book, she feels that she’s fighting against this oppressive regime

Asked by Robinson why the Taliban were “so afraid of girls and women getting an education”, Basij-Rasikh responded: “Educated girls go on to become educated women, and they go on to decide their own futures. They go on to become teachers, business owners and, in some cases, presidents of countries.” 

She continued: “I know I’m about to generalise, but men tend to be really drawn to power, where women as leaders are drawn to bringing everybody along, and they take an inclusive approach and fight for the rights of others.”

Basij-Rasikh (pictured) also recalled the “incredible progress” made prior to the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.

“Despite all the challenges, young girls were going to school, women were thriving as activists, as civil servants, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as civil society leaders, as people who really care deeply about elevating the lives of everyone,” she said.

School attendance among girls was still low, however, so she created SOLA in 2016 – the first boarding school for girls in Afghanistan – which by 2021 had become a “sisterhood” of around 100 girls from all around the country. The school staff were evacuated to Rwanda that year: “We landed there, August 25th, 2021, and four days later, we had Zoom classes for our girls.” 

Demand has far outpaced SOLA’s capacity since then. A year ago, it created a WhatsApp-based programme to serve many more girls. “When we launched, we imagined that we would reach, in year one, 10,000 learners. Today, we have close to 19,000.”

Top picture: Malala Yousafzai speaking on Wednesday at the Skoll World Forum. Photos supplied by Skoll Foundation