Afghanistan’s universities opened their doors, with male students making their way back to classes following the winter break, while women are still shut out by the ruling Taliban.
According to an Al Jazeera news story, the university ban is one of several restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 and has sparked global outrage.
The Taliban government imposed the ban, accusing female students of ignoring a strict dress code and a requirement to be accompanied by a male relative to and from campus.
Most universities had already implemented gender-segregated entrances and classrooms, as well as allowing women to take classes from only female professors or elderly men.
“It’s painful to see that thousands of girls are deprived of education today,” Mohammad Haseeb Habibzadah, a student of computer science at Herat University, said in an interview with AFP news agency.
“We are trying to address this issue by talking to lecturers and other students so that there can be a way where boys and girls can study and progress together.”
‘Gender-based apartheid’
Ejatullah Nejati, an engineering student at Kabul University, Afghanistan’s largest, who stated it was a fundamental right of women to study, said even if they attended classes on separate days, it wouldn’t be a problem.
“They have a right to education, and that right should be given to them,” he was quoted as saying as he entered the campus of the university.
Several Taliban officials say the ban on women’s education is temporary, but despite promises, they have failed to reopen secondary schools for girls, which have been closed for more than a year.
They have wheeled out a litany of excuses for the closure, from a lack of funds to the time needed to remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.
The reality, according to some Taliban officials, is that the religious scholars advising Afghanistan’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhunzada are deeply skeptical of modern education for women, AFP said in its report.
Since retaking power, the Taliban authorities have effectively squeezed women out of public life.
Women have been removed from many government jobs or are paid a fraction of their former salary to stay at home. They are also barred from going to parks, fairs, gyms, and public baths, and must cover up in public.
Rights groups have condemned the restrictions, which the United Nations called “gender-based apartheid.”
Also on Monday, rights group Amnesty International appealed to the UN Human Rights Council to address the “relentless abuses” by the Taliban, including severe restrictions on women and freedom of speech.
“The human rights situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly, and the Taliban’s relentless abuses continue every single day,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general.
“It is clear that the Taliban are neither willing nor able to investigate actions by their members that grossly violate the human rights of Afghanistan’s population,” she added.
Source: Al Jazera News