Afghanistan’s higher education ministry, run by Taliban, on Tuesday barred access to universities by girls students till further announcement. The move was strongly condemned by the United States, Britain and the United Nations.
A spokesman for the higher education ministry said that a letter ordered the public and private universities to stop girls from attending classes in universities immediately. The letter was as per a Cabinet decision.
The decision by the Taliban government, which has been rejected internationally, was taken while the United Nations Security Council met in New York on Afghanistan.
Foreign governments, including the United States, have said that policies should be made to favor women’s education and after that they can formally recognize the Taliban regime, which is already treated with heavy sanctions.
In the UNSC meet, US Deputy UN Ambassador Robert Wood said, “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,” while calling the decision “absolutely indefensible.”
State Department spokesperson Ned Price, speaking in Washington, said that US will consider what else it can do to put the Taliban to account.
Britain’s UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward said the move was “another egregious curtailment of women’s rights and a deep and profound disappointment for every single female student.”
She further said, “It is also another step by the Taliban away from a self-reliant and prosperous Afghanistan.”
Taliban was criticized by many nations in March for backtracking on its earlier announcement of opening higher education to girls.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the decision on Tuesday was “clearly another broken promise from the Taliban.”
“It’s another very troubling move and it’s difficult to imagine how the country can develop, deal with all of the challenges that it has, without active participation of women and the education of women,” he told reporters in New York.
Special ambassador for Afghanistan to the UN, Roza Otunbayeva, called the decision was “devastating.”
Otunbayeva, speaking to the Security Council just before the news from Kabul, said that the Taliban government’s contacts with the outside world had been “undermined” by the closure of high schools, which was also “very unpopular among Afghans and even within the Taliban leadership.”
“As long as girls remain excluded from school and the de facto authorities continue to disregard other stated concerns of the international community, we remain at something of an impasse,” she further added.
The decision came at a time when university students were giving term end exams. Mother of a university student said her daughter called her with teary eyes when she got to know of the letter, scared of an unhopeful future as thinking she would be unable to continue her medical studies in Kabul.
“The pain that not only I .. and (other) mothers have in our heart, could not be described. We are all feeling this pain, they are worried for the future of their children,” she said.
