Ottawa urged to act after Taliban shuts women out of higher education | 24CA News

Afghan girls and advocacy teams are urging the federal authorities to do extra to help feminine college students in Afghanistan after the Taliban imposed an open-ended ban on girls attending universities.

In a letter, Afghanistan’s de-facto minister of upper schooling Neda Mohammad Nadeem has instructed the nation’s private and non-private universities to droop “the education of females until further notice.”

Western governments, together with the U.S. and Canada, condemned the transfer inside hours.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken known as the Taliban’s motion “indefensible,” including schooling is a human proper and “essential to Afghanistan’s economic growth and stability.”

He additionally warned of unspecified penalties for the regime.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly tweeted that the Taliban was denying girls and ladies “the prospect of a better life.”

“Equal access to education is a right to which every woman and girl is entitled,” she wrote. “We condemn this outrageous violation.”

But many are in search of one thing greater than phrases from Ottawa. 

Friba Rezayee is a former Afghan Olympian who arrived in Canada in 2011; she now helps different feminine Afghan athletes flee the Taliban by way of her group Women Leaders of Tomorrow. She mentioned the federal government of Canada must forge ties with non-governmental organizations in Kabul to help Afghan girls.

“Those small grassroots organizations are still working and we are the people who have contacts and people on the ground, to make change, and also reach out to those women and families who are in need,” she mentioned. 

Like many western nations, Canada shut down its embassy in Kabul indefinitely after the Taliban accomplished its navy takeover in August 2021.

Ottawa did appoint a senior official for Afghanistan, David Sproule, who has met with Taliban representatives greater than a dozen instances since. Together with different Global Affairs Canada workers and diplomats from different western nations, he has been urgent the regime on girls’s rights to schooling, the battle in opposition to terrorism and the necessity to lengthen protected passage for Afghans making an attempt to go away the nation.

Rezayee mentioned these talks clearly went nowhere.

“The Canadian government has been very nice and patient with the Taliban,” she mentioned.

She identified that the regime shut ladies out of excessive colleges months in the past.

“They are taking Afghanistan and Afghan women nearly three decades back,” mentioned Habiba Nazari, an utilized sciences scholar on the University of British Columbia.

Nazari, who lives in Vancouver, fled Afghanistan earlier than the Taliban’s takeover — however her six sisters needed to keep behind.

Now, she fears her youthful sisters won’t ever be capable to attend college.

“They are really thinking about this — ‘We are not going to school, we don’t have any opportunity to attend any school, any program.’ And they don’t know about their future,” she mentioned.

Lauryn Oates works with Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, a non-governmental group that works to advertise literacy and entry to schooling in Afghanistan.

Her group is urging Ottawa to fund digital education for women and girls shut out of the schooling system in Afghanistan, and to offer education for individuals who’ve moved on to 3rd nations exterior Canada. 

“Make sure that girls and women have access to alternative forms of education,” she mentioned.

Oates mentioned she fears shutting women and girls out of faculty is simply a part of the Taliban’s plan.

Her group pointed to an Afghan newspaper, Hasht-e-Shubh, which revealed what gave the impression to be a leaked draft of a Taliban proposal for a brand new academic curriculum, 

24CA News has not independently verified this publication, however Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan steered the Taliban desires “a complete ban on images of all living things, mention of music, television, elections, birthdays, radio” and “non-Islam figures such as scientists.”

“Access is meaningless if you don’t get a true education that actually means something that you can do something in your life with, that you have better life opportunities, better livelihood opportunities with,” Oates mentioned.

The federal authorities didn’t reply to a request for remark for this story.