Afghan Universities Reopen With Strict Curbs For Female Students

Kabul: Private universities resumed functioning in war-torn Afghanistan on Monday with the Taliban allowing female students to attend classes.

However, the hardline Islamist outfit has imposed restrictions on the clothes they may wear, where and how they are seated in class, who can teach them, and even the length of their classes.

Earlier on Saturday, the Taliban’s education authority had issued a document on the code of conduct for female students attending classes.

According to the document, the women were ordered to wear an abaya robe and niqab that covers most of the face,

The universities were told to segregate classes on the basis of sex or at least divide male and female students by a curtain.

The document also ordered that female students should only be taught by other women. If this is not possible then “old men of good character” can fill in. “Universities are required to recruit female teachers for female students based on their facilities,” the document said.

Among other decrees, men and women must use separate entrances and exits, and female students must leave five minutes earlier to stop men and women from mixing.

Also, female students must stay in waiting rooms till their male counterparts have left the building.

A university professor, who asked not to be named, told news agency AFP: “It is a difficult plan as we don’t have enough female instructors or classes to segregate the girls… But the fact that they are allowing girls to go to schools and universities is a big positive step.”