Afghan girls may now only complete school until sixth grade, but are barred from secondary and higher education. The move has sparked broad condemnation among the population.
Afghan women protesting against the education banImage: Bilal Guler/AA/picture alliance
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The Taliban announced on Yalda Night, celebrated on winter solstice in Afghanistan and the wider region, that women will be barred from universities. Across the country, armed Taliban guards refused women access to university buildings.
"I am shocked," Nazifa Zaki, a student at Ghor University in western Afghanistan, told DW. "I feel hopeless, because an entire generation, half the population, is being excluded from education." Massouda, a woman who studied in Kabul and hails from Jowzjan province, is aghast. "This decision by the Islamic Emirate is unfair."
Female students have been refused entry to university, like here in KabulImage: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images
In Afghanistan, girls and women may now only attend school until sixth grade. On Thursday, in some Afghan cities, girls were even sent home from primary schools. Female teachers reportedly lost their jobs. A gathering of school principals and spiritual leaders this week said women in Afghanistan should no longer be allowed to work as teachers or visit mosques, though an official decision has not yet been announced.
University ban: Afghanistan's disenfranchised women
Since seizing power in mid-2021, the Taliban have increasingly restricted the rights of Afghan women and girls. Now, the hardline Islamists are denying women access to higher education, sparking international outrage.
Image: AFP
Leaving for good?
A woman in a burqa leaves a university in Kandahar province. She won't be allowed to return. In a government statement Tuesday, the hardline Islamist Taliban instructed all universities in Afghanistan, private and public, to ban women from attending. As of now, all female students are barred from universities.
Image: AFP
Women are excluded
Taliban control the entrance to a university in Kabul the day after the university ban was imposed. Female students are told they cannot go in. The ban is set to remain in place indefinitely. There have, however, already been some signs of protest at the universities: Male students walked out of an exam, and some male teachers went on strike.
Image: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images
Higher education for men only
Some restrictions had already been put in place before now. After the Taliban took power in August 2021, universities had to separate entrances and classrooms by gender. Women could only be taught by other women or by old men. This picture shows how screens separated an area for female students at Kandahar University.
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The last of their kind
These female students at Benawa University in Kandahar were still able to graduate in March with degrees in engineering and computer science. The renewed restriction of women's rights in Afghanistan has come in for heavy international criticism. Human Rights Watch called the university ban a "shameful decision," while the UN said it violated women's human rights.
Image: JAVED TANVEER/AFP
'Devastating impact on the country's future'
Thousands of girls and women took university entrance exams as recently as October —as here, at Kabul University. Many wanted to study medicine or become teachers. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the university ban "not only violates the equal rights of women and girls, but will have a devastating impact on the country's future."
Image: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images
No educational opportunities for girls
The ban on university attendance is yet another restriction on educational opportunities for women and girls. For over a year now, teenage girls have only been able to attend secondary school up to seventh grade in most parts of the country. These girls walking to school in eastern Afghanistan are lucky: Some of the provinces away from the Taliban's central powerbases are ignoring the ban.
Image: AFP
Land of invisible women
Girls and women are now excluded from most aspects of Afghan public life. They haven't been allowed to visit gyms or parks in Kabul for months. Even this amusement park in the capital is off-limits to female visitors. The Taliban justify the ban by saying regulations on the separation of the sexes were not being observed, and women were not wearing the headscarf as required by the Taliban.
Image: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images
Dystopian reality
Women gather saffron flowers in Herat province. This is work they are allowed to do, unlike most other professions. Since coming to power, the Taliban have enacted a great many regulations that hugely restrict the lives of women and girls. For example, they are forbidden from traveling without a male companion and must wear the hijab or burqa outside their home at all times.
Image: MOHSEN KARIMI/AFP
'A blot of shame on the world'
Many Afghan women refuse to accept the abolition of their rights. These women were demonstrating in Kabul in November. A placard, in English, reads "Horrific Condition of Afghan Women Is A Blot of Shame to the World Conscience." Anyone who dares to protest requires a great deal of courage. Demonstrators risk beatings and imprisonment, and women's rights activists are persecuted in Afghanistan.
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"This will greatly harm Afghanistan and the people of Afghanistan," Shaharzad Akbar, the former head of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, told DW. "In a society where half the population has no access to education, the population will remain poor and dependent on the international community." For two years now, Afghanistan has been blighted by a hunger crisis. According to the UN, this winter, some 23 million Afghans will lack food.
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Outrage over move
Numerous protests were staged by students and teachers following the ban. A group of male medical students, for instance,got up during an exam and left the room in protest. Students gathered outside Nangarhar University, in eastern Afghanistan, to protest for hours. Dozens of women took to the streets in Afghan cities, chanting slogans like "everyone or no one" and "education for all."
The Taliban beat protesters to break up demonstrations. Across the country, male university lecturers stopped working, or quit their jobs, in protest over the ban.
Obaidullah Wardak, who teaches at Kabul's mathematics department, was one of the first to quit. He saw no other choice. "I could not reconcile this with my conscience, I wanted to show solidarity," he told DW. While he said he doubted the Taliban would be deterred by the resignation, he said he hoped many more would do likewise.
Abas Basir, who served as education minister under former President Ashraf Ghani until he was ousted in August 2021, thinks that persistent pressure from ordinary Afghans will force the Taliban to change course. "When teachers and lecturers collectively quit and leave universities and schools, this could lead to a positive result," he told DW.
Solidarity with Afghan women
Afghan politician and Islamic feminist Shukria Barakzai says now is the time for global action. Barakzai once studied in Kabul but was unable to finish her degree because the Taliban came to power in the 1990s. "The Taliban have proven that they systematically discriminate against women," she told DW. "The people of Afghanistan and the international community should push back collectively and not forget the responsibility they hold towards women."
Even some Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, which are known to have curtailed women's rights, have condemned the Afghan education ban as "inhumane" and "un-Islamic." The Taliban, meanwhile, do not recognize these countries as Islamic and instead believe they are governing the only country where Islamic law is properly applied.
