Coup in Afghanistan – Taliban allow girls to attend secondary school – News

• The new school year starts next week in Afghanistan. Girls should also be able to attend secondary schools.
• All schools would also be opened to girls, Kabul Education Ministry spokesman Asis Ahmad Rajan told Reuters.
• After the Taliban took power last August, the international community repeatedly called for girls and women in Afghanistan to have access to education.

The radical Islamic Taliban in Afghanistan, who are struggling for international recognition, will also be allowing girls to attend secondary schools next week at the start of the new school year. However, girls should only be taught separately from boys and only by female teachers, emphasized spokesman Asis Ahmad Rajan. In rural areas with few teaching staff, older teachers could, exceptionally, also take over the teaching of the girls.

Access to education for girls and women is one of the key demands of the international community to the Taliban, who took over the government last August after years of fighting. Most countries do not recognize the new rulers and justify this, among other things, with the position of women in a fundamentalist Islamist society.

In their first period of rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban in Afghanistan excluded women from education and almost all professions. The Taliban want to rule the country again according to their interpretation of Islamic law. At the same time, they depend on billions in aid from the West to fight widespread poverty and hunger. The aid was largely discontinued last year.

Women in Afghanistan have reported in recent months that they are often denied participation in public life. In several cases, those affected had to give up their jobs. Women’s rights officer Heather Barr at Human Rights Watch warned that the reopening of schools for girls is not necessarily an indication of respect for women’s rights.