United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is «deeply alarmed» by the Taliban’s decision to deny university access to women in Afghanistan, he said through his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric.
The secretary-general reiterated that the denial of education not only violates women’s equal rights, but will also have «a devastating impact on the future of the country.» «The secretary general urges the de facto authorities to ensure equal access for women and girls to education at all levels,» the spokesman’s statement reads.
Following this, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said the decision is «another terrible and cruel blow» to the rights of Afghan women and girls and stressed that it is «a deeply regrettable setback for the entire country.»
«The systematic exclusion of women and girls from virtually every aspect of life, as I have said before, has no parallel in the world. Excluding women from university education is even more disheartening considering the vital contribution Afghan women made in many professional and vocational areas over the years,» she has explained.
Turk stressed that «in addition to banning girls from attending high school, think of all the female doctors, lawyers and professors who have been and will be lost to the development of the country,» while stressing that the decision «is a clear violation of Afghanistan’s obligations under international law.»
«The right of women and girls to access all levels of education without discrimination is fundamental and unquestionable. I call on the ‘de facto’ authorities to immediately withdraw this decision and to fully respect and facilitate the right of women and girls to access education at all levels, for their sake and for the sake of Afghan society as a whole,» he reiterated.
The Taliban-installed authorities in Afghanistan on Tuesday banned «until further notice» the admission of women to public and private universities across the country, Afghan news agency Jaama Press reported. The Ministry of Higher Education, headed by Mullah Neda Mohamed Nadim, has issued a brief statement urging the suspension of admission of women to higher educational institutions.
The Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — which replaced the Ministry of Women’s Affairs after the Taliban came to power — Mohamad Khalid Hanafi, had said Tuesday that the reopening of secondary schools for female students, closed since the Taliban came to power, «depends to a large extent on the creation of a decent cultural and religious environment.»
Taliban authorities have faced criticism over the closure of schools and the exclusion of female students from them, amid a raft of discriminatory measures against women that keep them away from their jobs and govern aspects of their daily lives. Since August, the authorities have prevented female students above the sixth grade from returning to class, something they have authorized for male students. The process of reopening universities following the imposition of gender segregation in the classroom ended in February.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
