February 2 marked 500 days since the Taliban banned Afghan girls from secondary education. That day the Taliban also arrested university professor Ismail Mashal, one of the few men to bravely protest the Taliban’s recent ban on women’s university education.
A month after the Taliban abruptly banned women from colleges and universities in Afghanistan, U.S. institutions are trying to help them back into academe any way they can.
Yet again, the United States is failing to meet its moral obligations to Afghans. In this case the 2022 cohort of Afghan Fulbright scholars. Having completed their academic programs in the US, they are, as outlined in their letter to the Dept. of State, posted here, in legal and economic limbo.
“[The OIC] Urges the de facto Afghan Authorities to allow women and girls to exercise their rights and contribute to the development of Afghan society in accordance with the rights and responsibilities as guaranteed to them by Islam and international human rights law.” Point 10, Communique from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
We are encouraged by the report of UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffith’s tour of Afghanistan, who points to interactions with the Taliban that show cracks in the monolith of the existing authority. An encouraging number of provincial Taliban seem ready to change.
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.
Multilateralism is supposed to be the guarantor of all human rights and dignity, for all people, at all times. But as governmental regimes weaken, so do traditional multilateral entities heavily reliant on those governments. It is time for community-based transnational networks based on intergenerational, multicultural, gender-sensitive leaders.
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.