KABUL (AFP/Reuters) – Male students have trickled back to their classes after universities reopened in Afghanistan following a winter break, but women remain barred by the ruling Taliban.
The university ban is one of several restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 and has sparked global outrage.
“It’s heartbreaking to see boys going to the university while we have to stay at home,” said Rahela, 22, from the central province of Ghor.
“This is gender discrimination against girls because Islam allows us to pursue higher education. Nobody should stop us from learning.”
The Taliban government imposed the ban accusing female students of ignoring a strict dress code and a requirement to be accompanied by a male relative to and from campus.
Most universities had already introduced gender-segregated entrances and classrooms, as well as allowing women to be taught only by female professors or old men.
“It’s painful to see that thousands of girls are deprived of education today,” Mohammad Haseeb Habibzadah, a student of computer science at Herat University, told AFP news agency.
“We are trying to address this issue by talking to lecturers and other students so that there can be a way where boys and girls could study and progress together.”
Several Taliban officials say the ban on women’s education is temporary but, despite promises, they have failed to reopen secondary schools for girls, which have been closed for more than a year.
They have wheeled out a litany of excuses for the closure, from a lack of funds to the time needed to remodel the syllabus along their ideological lines.
Taliban authorities have effectively squeezed women out of public life since retaking power.
The Taliban’s treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan could amount to a crime against humanity, according to a UN report presented on Monday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Taliban seized power in August 2021, drastically curtailing women’s freedoms and rights, including their ability to attend high school and university.
In a report covering July to December 2022, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, found that the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls “may amount to gender persecution, a crime against humanity”.
“The Taliban’s intentional and calculated policy is to repudiate the human rights of women and girls and to erase them from public life,” Bennett told the United Nations Human Rights Council. “It may amount to the international crime of gender persecution for which the authorities can be held accountable.”