The UN's top expert on rights in Afghanistan urges countries to consider making "gender apartheid" an international crime. Speaking after the release of his latest report, UN Special Rapporteur, Richard Bennett, says "we have pointed to the need for more exploration of 'gender apartheid', which is not currently an international crime, but could become so". Since ousting a foreign-backed government in August 2021, the Taliban authorities have imposed austere sharia law, barring girls from secondary school, pushing women out of many government jobs, preventing them from travelling without a male relative and ordering them to cover up outside the home.