They have ended funding for research, training and bilateral scholarships (those approved on a government-to-government basis) in Afghanistan. There is no alternativeīy contrast, governments in Europe and North America are focusing more on essential humanitarian aid. Earlier this month, China’s ambassador to the country, Wang Yu, is reported to have opened a new auditorium and teaching building at Kabul University.Īfghanistan’s girls’ schools can - and must - stay open. China is also providing funding for Afghanistan’s higher education, partly through its Belt and Road Initiative. Some countries, including China, India, Iran and Pakistan, host students and researchers of all genders from Afghanistan at their universities. These developments have left governments and scientific collaborators grappling with what kind of relationship they want with the Taliban leadership. But the reality is that unless the ban on girls’ secondary education is reversed, within a few years there will be no more girls going through secondary school, and no more women going on to higher education and research. Hundreds of teachers have set up informal, often secret, schools so that girls can continue to learn. Courses and research projects have had to be terminated if a male teacher or researcher cannot be found, creating chaos and uncertainty for students.Īnd, as has been widely reported, teenage girls are banned outright from being educated in schools. Women have had to accept pay cuts and demotion to keep their jobs. Most cannot hold roles in senior administration or technical support. This makes it difficult for them to be professors or principal investigators. Nor can women be managers or supervisors in workforces that include men. Universities are open and classes have resumed, but they are segregated by gender and women cannot, officially, teach men. The Taliban’s repression of girls and women is a daily reality. Taliban rule takes toll on Afghanistan’s academics - especially women Countries that have opted to isolate the Taliban in protest against their repressive policies should evaluate the impact of this course of action, and ask whether it has been working.
They, especially the girls and women among them, need the world’s full support - in cash, in other resources, in whatever way possible. They are now in an existential fight to stop their country going back in time. An explosion in knowledge, technology and job opportunities in the intervening years nurtured a generation of ambitious and capable young people. The blanket ban has not yet returned, in part because today’s Afghanistan is not the country of 2001. Rape and violence were commonplace.įor now, girls’ primary schools are still open, and some women are working. Back then, all girls’ schools in the country were closed, and women couldn’t work, or have any role in public life. When the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August last year, many people rightly feared a return to conditions under the group’s first government, between 19.
Credit: Mohammad Noori/Anadolu Agency/Getty But unless the ban on secondary school for girls is lifted, universities will eventually become male-only zones. Volunteers continue to educate teenage girls in informal schools such as this one.