In July, the Taliban introduced a gathering of handpicked clerics to resolve on the destiny of the schooling ban. However solely two clerics got here in help of the ladies’ schooling. Since then, the Taliban has not made any progress on whether or not they’re prepared to compromise
“Initially, we have been hopeful that they’d reopen faculties, however with the passage of time, we seen that, no, they’re doing one thing else. They only subject anti-women verdicts after every day,” Nazhand mentioned. “I do not assume that they’re prepared to reopen faculties, the Taliban haven’t any drawback with women’ faculties, however they wish to exploit them politically. They wish to proceed their ruling on society by banning women faculties. It’s of their curiosity to impose restrictions on girls as a result of they can not do it on males.”
After the US military intervention of Afghanistan in late 2001 that ousted the Taliban from energy, the war-torn nation witnessed a sequence of socioeconomic reforms and rebuilding packages. The post-Taliban constitution, which was ratified in 2004, expanded girls’s rights to go to high school, vote, work, serve in civic establishments, and protest. By 2009, girls have been operating for president for the primary time within the nation’s historical past.
However the 4 many years of battle and hostility inflicted huge hurt to Afghanistan’s primary infrastructures, together with to the nation’s instructional belongings.
And even earlier than the Taliban seized energy on Aug. 15 final yr, a report by UNICEF discovered that Afghanistan had struggled with greater than 4.2 million youngsters out of college, 60% of whom have been women. Though the potential prices of not educating girls and boys alike are excessive when it comes to misplaced earnings, not educating women is very pricey due to the connection between instructional attainment and pupil delaying marriage and childbearing, taking part within the workforce, making selections about their very own future, and investing extra within the well being and schooling of their very own youngsters later in life. The evaluation signifies that Afghanistan shall be unable to regain the GDP misplaced throughout the transition and attain its true potential productiveness with out fulfilling women’ rights to entry and full secondary faculty schooling. UNICEF additionally estimated that If the present cohort of three million women have been capable of full their secondary schooling and take part within the job market, it will contribute at the least $5.4 billion to Afghanistan’s financial system.
A report by Amnesty International additionally says that the Taliban have prevented girls throughout Afghanistan from working.
“Most girls authorities workers have been instructed to remain residence, apart from these working in sure sectors similar to well being and schooling,” the report states. “Within the personal sector, many ladies have been dismissed from high-level positions. The Taliban’s coverage seems to be that they may permit solely girls who can’t be changed by males to maintain working. Ladies who’ve continued working instructed Amnesty Worldwide that they’re discovering it extraordinarily tough within the face of Taliban restrictions on their clothes and conduct, such because the requirement for ladies docs to keep away from treating male sufferers or interacting with male colleagues.”
“Twenty years in the past, when the Taliban took management of Afghanistan, the very first thing they did was a ban on girls’s entry to schooling,” Nazhand mentioned. “The Taliban saved a lot of girls in isolation and as an illiterate inhabitants; the end result was a paralyzed and backward society. We should not neglect that the Taliban are nonetheless affected by the novel and repressive mindset that they’d maintain 20 years in the past. We should not stay the ladies that we have been 20 years in the past, and we is not going to stay silent.”
Safety threats and acts of terrorism have additionally been a serious concern to the scholars in Afghanistan. In late October, a suicide bomber attacked a category full of over 500 college students in west Kabul, killing at the least 54 faculty graduates — amongst them have been 54 young girls. The assault marked the second lethal assault on schooling facilities within the nation for the reason that Taliban had taken over energy.
