On the occasion of the Women Leaders in Law Summit, the European Bar Federation and the French National Bar Council wish to join forces to launch an appeal from the legal profession for the incorporation of the concept of gender apartheid into the classification of crimes against humanity, within the International Convention on Crimes Against Humanity currently under discussion at the United Nations.
The European Bar Federation and the French National Bar Council, meeting at the Women Leaders in Law Summit on 19 March 2026 in Paris,
CONSIDERING the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 30 November 1973;
CONSIDERING the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court of 17 July 1998;
HAVING REGARD to the report of the International Law Commission on the work of its seventy-first session in 2019, containing the draft articles on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity;
HAVING REGARD tothe resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 4 December 2024, by which it decides to convene the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against, to be held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for three consecutive weeks in early 2028 and for three consecutive weeks in early 2029 with a view to drafting and concluding a legally binding instrument on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity;
CONSIDERING the necessity to recognise the crime of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity;
WHEREAS systematic and institutional oppression and domination based on gender, which renders girls and women invisible in the public sphere and deprives them of access to education, work, healthcare and, more generally, to any social life outside the family sphere, constitutes a massive and extremely serious violation of fundamental human rights and must be subject to prosecution;
CALL UPON bar associations and international organisations representing the legal profession to join this call for the recognition of the crime of gender apartheid in international law;
CALL UPON the bar associations signing this appeal to undertake advocacy efforts with their respective governments to secure recognition of the concept of gender apartheid, in particular before 30 April 2026, the deadline by which States Parties may submit their proposed amendments to the 2019 draft articles, with a view to their being examined and negotiated at the meetings scheduled for 2028 and 2029;
CALL UPON the States Parties to the United Nations to support the legal and international recognition of gender apartheid and its incorporation into the future international treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity.
