Women and girls in Afghanistan will no longer be permitted to attend university after the Taliban issued an order banning them from attending all government and private universities.
A letter signed by the minister for higher education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, stated that universities are being “informed to implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice.”
Confirming the validity of the order to Agence France-Presse, Ziaullah Hashimi, spokesperson for the ministry, later tweeted the letter.
Journalist Yalda Hakim also tweeted the letter, adding: “Horrendous news for Afghan women and girls. The Taliban have announced the closure of universities for women in Afghanistan, according to a letter by the higher education minister. It is expected to take effect immediately.”
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price also voiced his condemnation, saying on Tuesday at a briefing, “This unacceptable stance will have significant consequences for the Taliban and will further alienate the Taliban from the international community and deny them the legitimacy they desire.”
UN chief’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan, Ramiz Alakbarov, said the UN was “deeply concerned” by the order, tweeting, “Education is a fundamental human right. A door closed to women’s education is a door closed to the future of Afghanistan.”
The International Rescue Committee, who released an Emergency Watchlist for 2023 that placed Afghanistan as No. 3 for global crises that are expected to worsen — tweeted, “The closure of universities to women and girls is a chilling step backwards for Afghanistan. There are no two ways about it: women must be allowed to work and to move freely, and girls must be allowed to continue to go to school.”
Human Rights Watch expressed their shock, tweeting “[The decision] is a shameful decision that violates the right to education for women and girls in Afghanistan. The Taliban are making it clear every day that they don’t respect the fundamental rights of Afghans, especially women.”
Shabnam Nasimi, a British-Afghan social activist and the Executive Director of Conservative Friends of Afghanistan has been speaking out about the crisis faced by women and girls since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021. Reacting to the latest decision, she tweeted, “Afghanistan is the ONLY country in the world that bans women and girls from going to school & university. This is a crime against humanity & it must not stand.”
Malala Fund, the international NGO advocating for girls’ education co-founded by Malala Yousafzai, tweeted:
“Young women are Afghanistan’s future — they are striving teachers, writers, doctors, business leaders and so much more. To crush the last hope they have of achieving their dreams is cruel and it’s a loss for the world.”
The latest ban is yet another regulation restricting the rights and freedoms of Afghan women and girls, and comes less than three months after women and girls risked their lives in order to sit the university entrance exams that would permit them entry to further studies.
Since the Taliban’s takeover more than a year ago, universities have been forced to separate their classes by gender, women have been required to wear head coverings while in class, female classes have only been taught by female teachers or older men, and girls have been banned from attending high school entirely.
Women continue to be banned from travelling without a male chaperone, and denied fair employment.
Women and girls are systematically excluded from all aspects of life in the country — a crisis that “deprives the country as a whole of the benefit of the significant contributions that women and girls make,” according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, in a statement released by United Nations Regional Information Centre.