Most Afghan teenage girls have been banned from high school
Cabul:
Taliban authorities on Tuesday ordered a nationwide ban on higher education for women, as hardline Islamists continue to crush Afghan women’s right to education and freedom.
Despite promising a softer rule when they came to power last year, the Taliban have stepped up restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives, ignoring international outrage.
“All of you are informed to immediately implement the order to suspend women’s education until further notice,” reads a letter to all government and private universities, signed by the ministry. Minister of Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem.
Ministry spokesman Ziaullah Hashimi, who tweeted the letter, confirmed the order in a text message to AFP.
The ban on higher education comes less than three months after thousands of girls and women took university entrance exams across the country, many of which aspire to be teaching and medicine as their future careers. future.
After the Taliban took over the country, universities were forced to implement new rules that included classes and entrance segregated by gender, while women were only allowed to teach by female or male professors. old man.
Most teenage girls across the country have been banned from high school, severely restricting college admission.
The Taliban adhere to an austere version of Islam, with the movement’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and a close group of Afghan clerics opposed to modern education, especially for girls and women. .
But they were at odds with many officials in Kabul and among their ranks who had hoped the girls would ally to continue their studies after taking over.
Women have been pushed out of many government jobs – or underpaid to stay at home. They are also prohibited from traveling without a male relative and must cover themselves outside the home, ideally with a headscarf.
In November, they were also banned from parks, fun fairs, gyms and public baths.
In a devastating twist, the Taliban in March blocked girls from returning to high schools the morning they had to reopen.
Some Taliban officials say the ban on secondary education is temporary, but they also offer a range of excuses for the closure – from a lack of funding to the time it takes to revamp the curriculum according to the rules. Islamic way.
Since the ban, many teenage girls have married early – often to much older men chosen by their fathers.
Coupled with economic pressure, several families interviewed by AFP last month said it was better to secure a future for their daughters through marriage than they were to stay at home.
The international community has made all women’s right to education a key point in negotiations over aid and recognition of the Taliban regime.
“The international community has not and will not forget the women and girls of Afghanistan,” the United Nations Security Council said in a statement in September.
In the 20 years between the two dynasties of the Taliban, girls were allowed to go to school and women were able to find work in all fields, although the country remained socially conservative.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from an aggregated feed.)
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