CSAS Lecture Series | Afghan Women’s Human Rights in the Age of the Taliban
Zahra Nader (U-M Knight-Wallace Fellow) and Karima Bennoune (U-M Law School)
In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8th, the Center for South Asian Studies is pleased to present a conversation focused on Afghanistan.
How might the lessons of decades of Afghan feminist advocacy help us imagine a just and equitable future for the country? What can we learn from considering the Taliban in the wider context of a worldwide battle against extremism? What does the situation of women in Afghanistan tell us about women’s rights globally and about feminist solidarity?
Speakers:
Zahra Nader is a 2025 Knight Wallace Fellow and the founding editor-in-chief of Zan Times, an award-winning newsroom in exile that covers human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Zahra has worked with local and international media, including the New York Times in Kabul. She has been bylined in publications ranging from Time and Foreign Policy to the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and DW. She has a master's in Communication and Culture and is a Ph.D. student in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies at York University in Canada.
Professor Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. She served as the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2015 to 2021. Bennoune was also appointed as an expert for the International Criminal Court in 2017 during the reparations phase of the groundbreaking case The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, concerning the intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites by extremists in Mali. A former legal advisor for Amnesty International, she has carried out human rights missions in most regions of the world. She has been on three missions to Afghanistan, visiting different regions of the country: in 1995, 2005, and 2011, and has worked closely with Afghan women human rights defenders for many years, including during the 2021 evacuations.
Karima is the author of “The International Obligation to Counter Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan,” which appeared in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review in December 2022 and has been translated into Farsi by the Afghanistan Institute for Strategic Studies. In September 2023, she spoke at the UN Security Council about gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Subsequently, she traveled to South Africa with Malala Yousafzai to participate in a panel on gender apartheid with the Nobel laureate after her December 2023 Nelson Mandela lecture.
Her book, “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here” recounts the stories of people of Muslim heritage around the world who have battled extremism, and won the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law gave her its “Prominent Woman in International Law” Award in 2024.
Made possible with the generous support of the Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
How might the lessons of decades of Afghan feminist advocacy help us imagine a just and equitable future for the country? What can we learn from considering the Taliban in the wider context of a worldwide battle against extremism? What does the situation of women in Afghanistan tell us about women’s rights globally and about feminist solidarity?
Speakers:
Zahra Nader is a 2025 Knight Wallace Fellow and the founding editor-in-chief of Zan Times, an award-winning newsroom in exile that covers human rights violations in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Zahra has worked with local and international media, including the New York Times in Kabul. She has been bylined in publications ranging from Time and Foreign Policy to the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and DW. She has a master's in Communication and Culture and is a Ph.D. student in Gender, Feminist & Women’s Studies at York University in Canada.
Professor Karima Bennoune is the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. She served as the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2015 to 2021. Bennoune was also appointed as an expert for the International Criminal Court in 2017 during the reparations phase of the groundbreaking case The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, concerning the intentional destruction of cultural heritage sites by extremists in Mali. A former legal advisor for Amnesty International, she has carried out human rights missions in most regions of the world. She has been on three missions to Afghanistan, visiting different regions of the country: in 1995, 2005, and 2011, and has worked closely with Afghan women human rights defenders for many years, including during the 2021 evacuations.
Karima is the author of “The International Obligation to Counter Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan,” which appeared in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review in December 2022 and has been translated into Farsi by the Afghanistan Institute for Strategic Studies. In September 2023, she spoke at the UN Security Council about gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Subsequently, she traveled to South Africa with Malala Yousafzai to participate in a panel on gender apartheid with the Nobel laureate after her December 2023 Nelson Mandela lecture.
Her book, “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here” recounts the stories of people of Muslim heritage around the world who have battled extremism, and won the 2014 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law gave her its “Prominent Woman in International Law” Award in 2024.
Made possible with the generous support of the Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
| Building: | Weiser Hall |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Human Right, Women's Studies |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Center for South Asian Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures |
