The Guardian Weekly

Afghanistan Women lose education rights

Taliban says women at university must study separately, sparking concerns over more measures to come

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen HANNAH ELLIS-PETERSEN IS THE GUARDIAN’S SOUTH ASIA CORRESPONDENT

T‘What is happening is a massive rollback on women’s rights’ Heather Barr Human Rights Watch

he Taliban has announced that women in Afghanistan will only be allowed to study at university in sex-segregated classrooms and Islamic dress will be compulsory, stoking fears that a gender apartheid will be imposed on the country under the new regime.

The international community has been keeping a close watch on how the new, all-male, Taliban regime is treating Afghan women in order to gauge just how much the Taliban’s pledges of moderation are a reality.

In one of the first policies announced by the Taliban, the higher education minister, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, laid out rules that will govern women’s access to higher education. At a press conference, Haqqani said women would be allowed to continue their university education, but it would be compulsory to wear a hijab. It was unclear if this meant a headscarf or if women’s faces would have to be covered completely.

Segregation would also be enforced at all universities, meaning men and women would have to be taught in separate classrooms. “We will not allow boys and girls to study together,” said Haqqani. Female students will only be allowed to be taught by women.

In a recent interview on the TV channel Tolo News, Taliban spokesman Sayed Zekrullah Hashimi said the role of women was to give birth and raise children, adding that it was “not necessary that women be in the cabinet”.

The new education policies mark a significant departure from how universities were functioning previously. Before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 15 August, universities across Afghanistan had been co-educational and women did not have to conform to any dress code. The number of female students in further education had reached record highs, and institutions such as Herat University and Ghalib University in Kabul had boasted more female students than male.

Since the Taliban took power, many female students have stayed at home out of uncertainty and fear, and women who took to the streets in protest demanding equal rights were met with violence and gunfire.

“We are receiving increasing reports where the Taliban have prohibited women from appearing in public places without male chaperones and prevented women from working. They have limited girls’ access to education in some regions,” the UN secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, told the security council last week.

Haqqani insisted the Taliban did not want to turn the clock back 20 years. “We will start building on what exists today,” he said.

In Kandahar, Zainab is one of two girls on a science degree course and her university has already said it’s not economical to teach them separately. She’s a term away from finishing, but doesn’t know if she will ever get the degree: “I am so sad, so disappointed.”

Gulalai is glad to be studying medicine, because the Taliban are allowing female doctors to work, but she is bleak about her degree quality. “There aren’t many women students, so we are not going to get expert teachers.”

Some state universities say they simply can’t cope. “The Taliban are talking about segregation but we are one of the biggest and best equipped universities in Afghanistan, and still don’t have capacity to do that,” said a professor at Herat University, which had a majority of female students; many have already dropped out.

“It is important that the international community not be too eager to applaud if and when the Taliban make some concessions, such as allowing girls to attend primary school,” said Heather Barr, deputy director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch. “What is happening in Afghanistan right now is a massive rollback on women’s rights … It’s devastating – and unacceptable – that we could be watching that happen in 2021.”

A reminder of the power of international pressure came in an apparent retreat on women’s cricket. The Taliban said it would not allow women’s cricket, Australia said it would cancel an upcoming men’s Test match if the ban was confirmed, and then the Afghan Cricket chair said no final decision had been made.

In Kandahar, women see international pressure as perhaps the only hope for change. “Tell the world to put more pressure on the Taliban to remove these rules, to change their attitudes,” Gulalai said. “If I have no job, and I am not allowed to study, I don’t care about security. This security is only for the Taliban.”

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2021-09-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-17T07:00:00.0000000Z

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