Tag: afghanistan women

  • Activists urge international group to call for rollback of Taliban’s choice to prohibit girls from universities

    Human Rights Watch referred to as it a “shameful” choice that violates the suitable to schooling of girls and women in Afghanistan.

    New Delhi,UPDATED: Dec 24, 2022 23:21 IST

    Representational Symbol (AFP/Report)

    Through Press Believe of India: Human rights activists and teams have appealed to the world group to urgently interfere and insist the instant rollback of the Taliban govt’s “misogynist decree” of banning girls from universities in Afghanistan.

    A number of international locations together with america, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK have strongly condemned the Taliban’s newest step in its brutal crackdown at the freedom of Afghan girls and women.

    In March, the Taliban barred women from going to secondary colleges.

    ALSO READ | Taliban orders NGOs to prohibit feminine staff from coming to paintings

    Human Rights Watch referred to as it a “shameful” choice that violates the suitable to schooling of girls and women in Afghanistan.

    “The Taliban is making it transparent each day that they do not recognize the basic rights of Afghans, particularly girls,” the HRW stated in a tweet.

    The Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy additionally condemned the “blatantly misogynist decree” of Taliban that for all sensible functions has successfully banned girls’s schooling in Afghanistan.

    “Because the Taliban have taken over in 2021, women have now not been in a position to get entry to colleges. Even though they promised to open women’ colleges from March 23, the similar day they revoked the order. Going through what they’ve executed with colleges, the ban seems to be an enduring one,” IMSD stated in a observation.

    ALSO READ | Bannu hostage disaster ends after army kills 33 Pakistani Taliban militants | 5 Issues

    “We welcome the truth that the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have condemned the Taliban’s regressive step and attraction to the world group to urgently interfere and insist that this grossly violative choice be taken again instantly” it stated.

    Kid rights activist and nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi stated denying schooling to ladies is totally unacceptable.

    “Each act of discrimination, suppression and abuse of girls and women is an act of crime in opposition to humanity. However how lengthy can darkness hang mild in captivity? Gentle of freedom will be successful,” Satyarthi tweeted.

    Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani feminine schooling activist and the 2014 Nobel peace prize laureate, tweeted, “The Taliban might lock all of the study rooms and college gates within the nation — however they are able to by no means lock up girls’s minds. They can not prevent women from searching for wisdom. They can not kill the search to be informed”.

    Yousafzai was once herself shot through a Taliban gunman in an assassination strive in retaliation for her activism.

    ALSO READ | Greater safety however little hope as Taliban mark yr in energy in Afghanistan

    India on Thursday joined a number of different main international locations in criticising the Taliban’s choice, and renewed its name for putting in place of an inclusive govt in Kabul that guarantees equivalent rights of ladies in all sides of the Afghan society.

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    Dec 24, 2022

  • UN: Exclusion of Afghan ladies from prime faculties ‘shameful’

    The United International locations on Sunday known as for Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to reopen faculties to ladies in grades 7-12, calling the anniversary in their exclusion from highschool “shameful.”

    The UN mentioned it’s an increasing number of involved that the coverage, in conjunction with different restrictions on elementary freedoms, will give a contribution to a deepening of the rustic’s financial disaster within the type of better lack of confidence, poverty and isolation.

    “It is a tragic, shameful, and completely avoidable anniversary,” mentioned Markus Potzel, performing head of the UN undertaking in Afghanistan.

    A yr after the Taliban took energy in Afghanistan, hard-liners seem to carry sway within the Taliban-led executive. Teenage ladies are nonetheless barred from college and ladies are required to hide themselves from head to toe in public, with simplest their eyes appearing. The non secular workforce has didn’t ship on quite a lot of guarantees to allow ladies’ go back to the study room. The ban objectives grades 7-12, basically impacting ladies age 12 to 18.

    The Taliban re-opened prime faculties to boys whilst educating ladies to stay at house. The U.N. estimates that greater than 1,000,000 ladies had been barred from attending highschool during the last yr.

    “The continued exclusion of ladies from highschool has no credible justification and has no parallel anyplace on this planet. It’s profoundly destructive to a era of ladies and to the way forward for Afghanistan itself,” mentioned Potzel, who may be the U.N. secretary-general’s deputy particular consultant for Afghanistan.

    To mark the Sunday anniversary, 50 ladies despatched a letter entitled “A 12 months of Darkness: A Letter from Afghan ladies to heads of Muslim international locations and different global leaders.” The women hail from the capital Kabul, jap Nangarhar province and northerly Parwan province.

    “The previous yr, we now have been denied human rights, similar to the appropriate to score an training, the privilege to paintings, the freedom to reside with dignity, freedom, mobility and speech, and the appropriate to resolve and come to a decision for ourselves,” Azadi, an 18-year-old Eleventh-grade pupil from Kabul, mentioned within the letter. The women named within the letter gave simplest their first names.

    The U.N. mentioned the denial of training violates probably the most elementary rights of women and girls. The arena frame mentioned it will increase the danger of marginalization, violence, exploitation and abuse in opposition to ladies and is a part of a broader vary of discriminatory insurance policies and practices concentrated on girls and women because the de facto government assumed energy in the summertime of 2021.

    The U.N. once more known as upon the Taliban to opposite the slew of measures they have got presented proscribing Afghan girls and women’ enjoyment in their elementary rights and freedoms.

    Since taking energy, the Taliban have struggled to control and stay the world over remoted. An financial downturn has pushed tens of millions extra Afghans into poverty and starvation because the drift of overseas support has slowed to a trickle.

  • ‘Why used to be I born a Woman?’ An Afghan poem evokes U.S. scholars

    When Fariba Mohebi, an eleventh grader, discovered in September that the majority Afghan ladies would no longer sign up for boys returning to college below Taliban rule, she close the door and home windows to her room. Then she broke down and sobbed.

    From her melancholy, a poem emerged: “Why Was once I Born a Woman?”

    “I want I used to be a boy as a result of being a lady has no price,” Mohebi wrote. Afghan males “shout and scream: Why must a lady find out about? Why must a lady paintings? Why must a lady are living unfastened?”

    Mohebi’s poem discovered its approach to Timothy Stiven’s Complicated Placement historical past elegance at Canyon Crest Academy, a public highschool 8,000 miles away in San Diego. It used to be relayed by way of Zoom calls between Canyon Crest and Mawoud, a tutoring middle that Mohebi attends in Kabul, the place ladies sit down at school with boys and males train ladies — trying out the boundaries of Taliban forbearance.

    Periodic Zoom periods between the Afghan and American scholars have opened a window to the arena for ladies at Mawoud, hardening their unravel to pursue their educations in opposition to daunting odds. The calls have additionally published the cruel contours of Taliban rule for the California scholars, opening their eyes to the repression of fellow top schoolers midway around the globe.

    “If I used to be a tenth as brave as those ladies are, I’d be a lion. They’re my heroes,” Diana Reid, a Canyon Crest scholar, wrote after a Zoom name this month through which Afghan ladies described navigating bombing threats and Taliban interference.

    For the Afghans, the Zoom periods had been a reminder that some American citizens nonetheless care about Afghans 5 months after U.S. troops withdrew in chaos and the U.S.-backed govt and army collapsed.

    “We’re so glad we don’t seem to be on my own on this international,” Najibullah Yousefi, Mawoud’s predominant, advised the San Diego scholars by way of Zoom.

    The Zoom calls had been organized in April through Stiven and Yousefi. An early matter of debate used to be Mohebi’s poetry. “Why Was once I Born a Woman?” induced an in-depth schooling in Afghan realities for the American scholars.

    “I will rarely consider how tough that will have to be, and the braveness the ladies will have to need to be sitting along male scholars after going through suicide bombings,” Selena Xiang, a Canyon Crest scholar, wrote after this month’s Zoom name. “It’s so other from my existence, the place schooling is passed to me on a silver platter.”

    This text initially gave the impression in The New York Occasions.