A heartbreaking video has emerged from a university in Afghanistan of women crying after they’re told to go home and leave the university as the Taliban bans female education.
Former Policy Special Advisor to Minister for Afghan Resettlement & Minister for Refugees, Shabnam Nasimi, posted the video on her Twitter with the caption, “Girls crying in agony as they’re told that they will have to leave the university & go home as the Taliban have BANNED female university education in Afghanistan. Painful to hear. How can we sit idly by as millions of girls are denied their human rights.”
Girls crying in agony as they’re told that they will have to leave the university & go home as the Taliban have BANNED female university education in Afghanistan.
— Shabnam Nasimi (@NasimiShabnam) December 21, 2022
Painful to hear. How can we sit idly by as millions of girls are denied their human rights.pic.twitter.com/lCANKZ1Kgq
The decision has since faced condemnation from the UN and other international bodies. and despair among young people in the country.
On Tuesday, the regression was announced by the minister of higher education saying it would be implemented immediately.
This further restricts women’s education in Afghanistan as girls were already excluded from secondary schools when the Taliban returned.
There were a lot of protests staged by women in Kabul to raise their voices against injustice. A protestor said,
“Today we come out on the streets of Kabul to raise our voices against the closure of the girls’ universities”.
However, they were quickly shut down by the Taliban officials. Women reached out to BBC and gave heartbreaking statements. One student said,
“They destroyed the only bridge that could connect me with my future”.
“How can I react? I believed that I could study and change my future or bring the light to my life but they destroyed it.”
Another female student said that she has “lost everything”.
She also argued over the Taliban’s contradiction to “the rights that Islam and Allah have given us”.
The United Nation’s Rapporteur to Afghanistan said it was “a new low further violating the right to equal education and deepens the erasure of women from Afghan society.”