Taliban Ban Afghan Women from Education | Girls can’t go to schools and university in Afghanistan
The Taliban government has suspended university education for all female students in Afghanistan, the latest step in its brutal clampdown on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women.
The universities are currently on winter break and due to reopen in March.
After the takeover of the country by the Taliban, universities were forced to implement new rules including gender-segregated classrooms and entrances, while women were only permitted to be taught by women professors or old men.
Most teenage girls across the country have already been banned from secondary school education, severely limiting university intake.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have banned university education for women nationwide, provoking condemnation from the United States and the United Nations over another assault on human rights.
Despite promising a softer rule when they seized power last year, the Taliban have ratcheted up restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives, ignoring international outrage.
“You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,” Minister for Higher Education Neda Mohammad Nadeem said in a letter issued to all government and private universities.
Taliban says women banned from universities in Afghanistan
The US and Britain criticised the ban, which the Taliban says preserves “national interest” and women’s “honour”
The announcement came as the United Nations Security Council met in New York on Afghanistan. The United States and British UN envoys both condemned the move during the council meeting.
Confirmation of the university restrictions came the same evening as a UN Security Council session on Afghanistan, at which the UN secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, said the closure of schools had “undermined” the Taliban administration’s relationship with the international community.
“No country can thrive when half of its population is held back.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply alarmed” by the ban, his spokesman said Tuesday.
