File photos: Afghan students outside Kabul University (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The Taliban government announced on Wednesday the start of a return to higher education institutions without female presenceafter last December, fundamentalists suddenly decided to remove female students from university classrooms.

“The spring semester of public higher education institutions for male students” will begin next week, the Taliban interim government’s Ministry of Higher Education reported on Twitter.

The Taliban thus confirm that women will not be integrated into universities for the time beingunlike their male colleagues, after last December they ordered the suspension of higher education for women until further notice.

This veto is in addition to the one already in place since the fundamentalists came to power in August 2021 which suspended female secondary education until adapting its content to Islamic law.

File photo: Afghan women chant slogans to protest the closure of universities to women (REUTERS/Stringer)
File photo: Afghan women chant slogans to protest the closure of universities to women (REUTERS/Stringer)

The fall of Kabul led to a deterioration of women’s rights, with restrictions such as the segregation by sex in public places, the imposition of the veil or the obligation to be accompanied by a male relative during long journeys.

The reality Afghans live in today increasingly resembles that of the era of the first Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001, when, based on a rigid interpretation of Islam and its known strict social code under the name of Pashtunwali, women were forbidden to go to school and women were confined to the house.

On the other hand, the non-governmental organization International Crisis Group estimated that the restrictions imposed on Afghan women since the coming to power of the Taliban “aggravate the crisis in Afghanistan”.

The plethora of bans women have faced since the fall of Kabul on August 15, 2021 has caused “a Sudden drop in international aid that will deeply hurt millions of Afghans.”, indicates the NGO in a report published on February 23. In response to the severe restrictions, “many aid agencies suspended their operations, generating fears of greater misery in the countrynotes the letter.

A Taliban fighter patrols as a woman walks past him on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, December 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
A Taliban fighter patrols as a woman walks past him on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, December 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Afghan economic analyst Noorullah Azizi told the news agency ECE that cuts in women’s rights force donor countries to reduce their activities in the country, thus paving the way for isolation of 50% of the Afghan population.

And economic affairs expert Iraj Faqiri warned ECE that the chain of rights that women have lost “will create more disasters in Afghanistan, because in the future half of the population will be deprived of education and will not participate in the development of Afghanistan”.

(With information from EFE)

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