16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence

Global 16 Days Campaign against Gender-Based Violence

Gender Apartheid

Fall 2025 Panel – Zoom on Nov 20, 2025 at 12:00 PM ET

RSVP to Attend

Panelists:

Charlotte Bunch - The Feminist Activist Origins of the 16 Days Campaign

Melissa Upreti - Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan:  Progress Towards Legal Recognition

Bahar Ghandehari - How Gender Apartheid in Iran is Crushing Women’s Lives and Futures

Moni Rani Das - Caste, Patriarchy, and Resistance: Unpacking Gender Apartheid in Bangladesh

Lisa Davis - Race, Gender, and Apartheid in the Draft Crimes Against Humanity Treaty
 

For more information on the Global 16 Days Campaign: click here! 

For more information about the panel series, contact: 
Dr. Julie Rajan - vgjulie@womenstudies.rutgers.edu

FALL 2025 PANEL
November 20: Gender Apartheid

This year, the Global 16 Days Campaign against Gender-Based Violence focuses on Gender Apartheid: a form of governance facilitating the systematic oppression and segregation of women, girls, and members of the LGBT+/nonbinary community through laws, policies, and practices that strategically reinforce their inequality and severely restrict their most basic of human rights, including to bodily autonomy. 
The Panelists for this event are experts in their fields who are directly involved in exposing and advocating against gender apartheid in a range of contexts, including the state-sanctioned targeting of cis-women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran; the institutionalized, systemic dehumanization of women and girls stemming from caste-based oppression in South Asia; and the brutal repression of the LGBT+/non-binary community. These discussions reflect the spirit of global calls to amend the crime of ‘Apartheid’ noted in the Draft Articles on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity currently under debate at the UN to recognize and encompass ‘Gender Apartheid’ as an international crime.

Charlotte Bunch (she/her), Introduction to the Global 16 Days Campaign
Distinguished Professor Emerita in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University, and Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership

Charlotte Bunch, Distinguished Professor Emerita in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University, was the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. She has been an activist in feminist, LGBTQ, and other human rights movements for over 50 years. She was a leader of the Global Campaign for recognition of women’s rights as human rights, as well as other international feminist initiatives. Bunch has written numerous influential essays and edited eight anthologies, as well as authored Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action and Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women’s Human Rights.

Melissa Upreti (she/her), Moderator and Panelist
Former Chair, UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, Human Rights Council

Melissa Upreti is an internationally recognised human rights lawyer who has spent over two decades advancing women’s rights and gender equality. Upreti has held leadership positions at the International Commission of Jurists, the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, and the Center for Reproductive Rights. She was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to serve as an Expert Member of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls (2017-2023) and served as Chair-Rapporteur (2021-2022). Upreti holds numerous honorary positions, including as a Fellow in the University of Toronto, Law Faculty’s International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, and as Co-Chair of the International Advisory Committee for Women of the South Speak Out (WOSSO), managed by ARROW and Gender Links. She has law degrees from India and the United States and is widely published.

Bahar Ghandehari (she/her), Panelist
Director of Advocacy at the Center for Human Rights in Iran

Bahar Ghandehari is an Iranian-born human rights defender and the director of advocacy at the Center for Human Rights in Iran. She is a junior policy fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, working on the End Gender Apartheid campaign. Ghandehari is the founder of the youth-led organization Middle East Matters, which focuses on media journalism and digital human rights campaigns. She previously served as the advocacy officer at the Syrian Emergency Task Force, where she worked on policy, advocacy, and accountability efforts concerning human rights issues and atrocities in Syria.

Moni Rani Das (she/her), Panelist
Founder and General Secretary, Dalit Women Forum

Moni Rani Das, a prominent figure in the Dalit rights movement in Bangladesh, was born and raised in a cleaner’s colony in Dhaka. Her personal experiences motivated her to challenge traditional norms and begin her journey in activism. In 2002, she joined the Bangladesh Dalit Human Rights (BDHR) organization as the Secretary of Women Affairs. Driven by a strong desire to improve the lives of Dalit women and girls, Das continued to work passionately for their rights and development. In pursuit of this goal, she founded her own organization in 2006 “the Dalit Women Forum” with the aim of empowering Dalit women through collective action. Very soon, she gained international recognition for her work and represented Dalit women from Bangladesh in forums in India, Nepal, Switzerland and the UK. In recognition of an outstanding contribution to the promotion of democracy and human rights, Das won the Sir Sigmund Sternberg One World Action Award in 2010. Very recently, she was selected for the 2025 Kamla Bhasin Award for Driving Gender Equality across South Asia.

Lisa Davis (they/them), Panelist
Senior Associate Dean of Clinical Programs, Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the Human Rights & Gender Justice Clinic (HRGJ) at CUNY School of Law

An internationally recognized expert on gender-based crimes and human rights in conflict and crisis settings, Lisa Davis has worked extensively on women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. Their legal and advocacy work has been cited by the UN Security Council, UN General Assembly, the Supreme Court of India, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the International Law Commission, Human Rights Watch, and others. Davis has also testified before the U.S. Congress, the European and U.K. Parliaments, the UN Security Council, and various international and regional human rights bodies. Davis currently serves as Special Adviser on Gender and Other Discriminatory Crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC). In that capacity, they drafted the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s first-ever policy on the crime of gender persecution. Davis helped shape the landmark gender persecution charges in the Afghanistan arrest warrants—the first in history to recognize LGBTQI+ victims of persecution as a crime against humanity.

PHOTO & VIDEO RELEASE

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This event is sponsored by: 

WGSS Affirming Multivocal Humanities, Mellon Higher Learning Grant, The Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies–New Brunswick;

The Institute for Women’s Leadership;

The English Department-New Brunswick;

The Center for Research on Ending Violence;

South Asian Studies Program-New Brunswick;

Global Asias-New Brunswick.