The decision, effective from Tuesday, will be in force "until further notice"

Taliban ban Afghan women from universities

photo_camera AFP/MOHD RASFAN - Women hold placards during a protest to demand an end to extrajudicial killings of former officials of the previous regime, in Kabul on 28 December 2021.

"Another step by the Taliban away from a prosperous and self-sufficient Afghanistan". This is how the UK ambassador to the United Nations, Barbara Woodward, defines the announcement of the ban on women's access to higher education centres. This decision, announced in a communiqué from the Taliban Ministry of Higher Education, was made official at the same time as a meeting of the UN Security Council on Afghanistan was taking place in New York.
 
The Taliban Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mohamad Khalid Hanafi, believes that the reopening of educational institutions "depends to a large extent on the creation of a decent cultural and religious environment". Since the Taliban seized power more than a year ago, the universities remained closed until February, when the reopening was completed, albeit with a gender division. Now the Taliban are going further and banning women from universities "until further notice".

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Despite the alarm caused by this announcement in the international community, the Taliban claim to be committed to respecting women's rights "as defined by Islam". They also reject what they see as the international community's "interpretation" of fundamental rights. Barbara Woodward was not the only one at the Council meeting to strongly denounce this new attack on Afghan women. Robert Wood, the US deputy ambassador to the UN, described the measure as "absolutely indefensible", as it could not be otherwise.
 
He believes that "the Taliban cannot expect to be a legitimate member of the international community until they respect the rights of all Afghans, especially the human rights and fundamental freedom of women and girls". And it is not that they are not moving in the right direction, it is that they are moving in the complete opposite direction, taking away more and more of the rights of the population, especially women and girls. That is why State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington will be looking at what actions the US can take to hold the Taliban accountable

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UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric also told reporters in New York that the new measure was "clearly another broken promise by the Taliban". Dujarric believes that this is "another very worrying measure and it is difficult to imagine how the country can develop, face all the challenges it has, without the active participation of women and the education of women". The feeling that Afghanistan currently casts on the international community is that it is in a cul-de-sac in which the Taliban's decisions are making it increasingly difficult to leave.

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