In December 2022, the Taliban, the de facto authority in Afghanistan, banned women from public and private universities until further notice. Reportedly, this decision was partly due to female students allegedly not adhering to the Taliban interpretation of the Islamic dress code and interacting with their male colleagues. However, some statements from Neda Mohammad Nadeem, acting higher education minister, suggests that the Taliban also did not agree with some of the courses studied by women. As he mentioned in an interview, “[women] were studying agriculture and engineering, but this didn’t match Afghan culture. [Women] should learn, but not in areas that go against Islam and Afghan honor.” Furthermore, the Taliban has banned girls from primary school and so imposed total ban on female education. Later, Abdel Rahman Habib, spokesman for the ministry of economy, announced that women were also banned from working for national and international NGOs.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 turned back time on the progress achieved over the last twenty years and ultimately resulted in women and girls being effectively removed from the Afghani public life. While initially, the Taliban promised that women would be able to “exercise their rights within Sharia law”, including being able to work and study, these promises were merely empty words. As Angelina Jolie emphasized, “Overnight, 14 million Afghan women and girls lost their right to go to high school or university, their right to work, and their freedom of movement.” Ms. Sima Bahous, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director, stressed that “there are no women in the Taliban’s cabinet, no Ministry of Women’s Affairs, thereby effectively removing women’s right to political participation. Women are, for the most part, also restricted from working outside the home, and are required to cover their faces in public and to have a male chaperone when they travel.”
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