Afghan women cannot study at the university until further notice. An order published by the Minister of Education this Tuesday obliges public and private universities to prevent access for students with immediate effect. The letter is based on a decision by the Taliban government, which has been in power in the Asian country since August 2021. The jihadist militia then took control of the country after US troops withdrew after two decades of military intervention and established an ironclad dictatorship with grave consequences for women. Since then, Afghans have gradually been stripped of the rights they had acquired during the 20 years of Western presence in the country.
BREAKING: The Taliban have banned women from universities.
This is a shameful decision that violates the right to education for women and girls in Afghanistan. The Taliban make it clear every day that they do not respect the basic rights of Afghans, especially women. pic.twitter.com/Ydf13rvsbF
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) December 20, 2022
The veto of the students at the universities culminates in the absolute exclusion of women from secondary and higher education. Before that, in October of last year, the Islamists had already banned young people from studying and closed their institutes. At the age of 12, the approximate age of puberty, young people are deprived of the right to education. In the first months of their return to power, which they already held between 1996 and 2001, the fundamentalists asserted that the ban on girls studying was temporary and argued that educational centers would be adapted to ensure strict gender segregation. Many Afghans and various civil society organizations defined this argument as mere subterfuge, since institutes in Afghanistan were already gender segregated.
More than a year after those words, Taliban spokesman and Deputy Information Minister Zabihulá Mujahid reiterated the same idea on Tuesday. Almost at the same time as he confirmed that Afghans over the age of 12 cannot attend classes, Mujahid asserted that the return of girls to schools was “inevitable”. The deputy minister then reiterated the argument that this return will come about when an “appropriate environment” is in place. This phrase is also used by Taliban officials when questioned about the ban on women, including journalists and judges, imposed after they took power.
In the first few months after occupying Kabul, the Taliban attempted to project a moderate image, which was interpreted as an attempt to get the international community to recognize their government and the atrocities and horrific human rights abuses they had committed during their previous rule. forget to make. Power, especially against the country’s women and girls. As a year and a half have passed, this supposed moderation is increasingly being called into question as the fundamentalist regime is gradually stripping Afghans of what few rights they still enjoy.
No sooner had the Taliban taken over the reins of the country than they shut down the Women’s Ministry and replaced it with the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Since then, wearing the burqa has become almost mandatory – it is the “ideal garment” for women, according to the Islamist regime – and little by little the Taliban have restricted women’s freedoms and, where possible, tightened the siege on Afghan women, half of the population of the 40-million-inhabitant country. The most recent of these anti-women measures, passed on November 10, was to ban women from Kabul’s parks and gardens. Since the closure of women’s institutes, secret schools for girls have sprung up in many areas of the country.
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The Taliban regime claims it defends women’s rights “as defined by Islam”. In other words, they forbid anything that is not expressly permitted by their strict interpretation of Sharia, Islamic law. This Tuesday, Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice Mohamad Khalid Hanafi indicated that the application of Sharia law was one of the former militia’s main objectives, Afghan news agency Jaama Press reported. “We are working to apply Sharia law and guide society on the right path,” Hanafi said.
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