Taliban ban university education for Afghan girls
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers banned university education for females nationwide, as they continue to crush women’s right to education and freedom.
Despite promising a softer rule when they seized power last year, the Taliban have ratcheted up restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives, ignoring international outrage.
"You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice," said a letter issued to all government and private universities, signed by the Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem.
The ban on higher education comes less than three months after thousands of girls and women sat university entrance exams across the country, with many aspiring to choose teaching and medicine as future careers.
After the takeover of the country by the Taliban, universities were forced to implement new rules including gender segregated classrooms and entrances, while women were only permitted to be taught by women professors or old men.
Most teenage girls across the country have already been banned from secondary school education, severely limiting university intake.
Hundreds of young women were stopped by armed guards from entering Afghan university campuses, a day after the nation's Taliban rulers banned them from higher education in another assault on human rights.
Afghans voiced outrage on social media over the Taliban's ban on women attending university, using the hashtag #LetHerLearn -- one of the only ways people can still protest in the country.
