As we continue the series on the Taliban’s bans on women’s education and employment, it is essential to our understanding and further action to hear directly from Afghan women who know best the harm these bans impose; not only on the affected women and their families, but on the entire Afghan nation. This statement from a coalition of Afghan women’s organizations fully describes these harms.
This post, a statement resulting from a high-level UN delegation to Afghanistan, is part of a series on the December edicts of the Taliban, banning women from university attendance and employment in the NGOs that provide essential services to the Afghan people.
Children aren’t just a source of conflict: they can also be agents of peace. So, when a community in Iraq turned to Nonviolent Peaceforce for support, the NP team got to work designing a specialized curriculum for the children.
Please consider signing this letter in response to the devastating impact of the recent bans on women’s higher education and women’s work in Afghanistan. Religions for Peace and The Interfaith Center of New York are hosting this letter with other faith-based and humanitarian NGOs in advance of high-level meetings between UN Officials and the Taliban or “De Facto Authorities.”
The Muslim Public Affairs Council, in this statement calling for the reversal of the Taliban’s ban on girls’ and women’s education, reiterates the assertions now being made by so many Muslim organizations. The policy is anti-Islamic and contradicts a basic principle of the faith on the right and necessity of education for all, so it must be immediately rescinded.
This statement makes specific demands, including (amongst others), the recognition of the human right to education with the immediate overturn of the ban on women and girls attending universities and secondary schools, and requesting the international community give voice in all fora with “the de facto authorities” to the necessity of fulfilling this right.
We urge members of the GCPE to support Sakena Yacoobi’s plea to give voice to the Afghan people whose dire plight has been generally ignored by the world community and inadequately addressed by the United States who have yet to fulfill promises to the Afghans who, though having assisted the US, were left behind to the mercies of the Taliban.
One primary Global Campaign for Peace Education resolution for the New Year is to focus mind, action, and spirit (that inner energy all of us tap into when acting to realize primary human values) on saving our planet. To fulfill that resolution we, as peace educators, assert that we must learn to think and behave in entirely new ways.
The recent upsurge in the Taliban’s repression of women cannot go unanswered. The world community, most especially the United States, must take action to address these grave injustices, and do so in accordance with the calls of Afghan Women. All of us should be urging our governments to fulfill these obligations of the world community to assure international standards of human rights and gender justice in Afghanistan.
The 2022 report “Risky Returns: Nuclear weapon producer and their financiers” details how 306 financial institutions made over $746 billion available to 24 companies heavily involved in the production of nuclear weapons, between January 2020 and July 2022.
During the Tigray war in Northern Ethiopia, the Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA) condemned the damage and disruption inflicted on students, teachers and the education system. They called on relevant public authorities to put an immediate halt to the armed conflict, and highlighted the role of peace education in bringing about peaceful societies.
Let us call for a ceasefire in Ukraine for Christmas as a sign of our shared humanity, reconciliation, and peace.