Just days after retaking power in August 2021, the Taliban abolished the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, a key body promoting women’s rights. In its place, the new regime set up the notorious Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, a public morality watchdog that enforces the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law. This ministry is instrumental in the systematic curtailing and eroding of the rights of women in Afghanistan.

In March, when young girls were turned back from attending secondary school, the picture of these girls in tears on their way back to their homes, spoke volumes about the scale of the obstacles and barriers they have to overcome. Their dreams of a future when they can be free from being told what they can and cannot do are dashed. Instead of educating them thus empowering them to craft and determine their own future, the Taliban rob them of their hopes for independence and advancement.

A glimmer of hope first appeared at the beginning of the takeover when in September 2021, the Taliban announced women were allowed to attend universities with gender-segregated classrooms while wearing the compulsory hijabs. Afghan women were willing to forgo comingling with the opposite sex so long as their right to higher education was not violated. However, the education ministry then reversed this and now bans women from university education and teaching nationwide and prevents them from taking university entrance examinations.

The Taliban took their misogynist action even further by banning women from going to public places; gyms and parks and from working in humanitarian non-governmental organizations.

These rulings set back the advances that Afghan women have made over the last two decades, essentially eliminating their human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The ban preventing women to work in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is beyond comprehension. I volunteer as a physician in many regions of the world, including the Muslim nations of Libya and Yemen with NGOs, women always play a major role in programs providing maternal and reproductive health, nutrition among children, and vaccination. These women are midwives, social workers, medical assistants, nurses, and doctors; their roles will be hard to fill if they are not allowed to work in Afghanistan.

This ban has resulted in service providers supporting survivors of gender-based violence and women’s shelters to shut down for fear of retribution. The ruling denies women who seek medical help from providers of the same gender of their basic human rights to safe health care. If the Taliban insist on gender-segregated classrooms, their ban of female aid workers does not make sense at all. How do they expect the women who are covered from head to toe in their hijabs to be willing to be examined by men, especially when they experience gender-based violence?

In Libya during the Arab spring, I was a volunteer woman physician caring for people displaced by the conflict. Many pregnant women accompanied by their husbands applied for travel permits to go to hospitals in conflict-free zones for the birth of their babies. Both husbands and wives wished to be seen by a woman healthcare personnel. Even with me as a woman physician, these women remained modest and were unwilling to pull off their hijabs to reveal parts of their bodies that needed to be examined.

By preventing women to work in aid organizations that address women’s issues which depend heavily on women as their workforce, the Taliban is using humanitarian aid as a misogynistic weapon.

Should girls and young women be allowed to go to school and determine their own future? Do women have the right to work for the betterment of their own gender? These are obvious basic human rights that are being chipped away from Afghan girls and women.

The United Nations designates October 11 as the Day of the Girl Child when the empowerment of girls and the safeguarding of their human rights are celebrated. It has as its goal to ensure access to “inclusive and equitable quality education” by 2030.

The edicts of the Taliban of Afghanistan which stop girls and women from getting an education are a travesty to women’s rights and the freedom to have control over their future.

In my memoir, The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly, it was clear the power of empowerment of girl education, it gave me a leg up to change my life. While I had to overcome poverty and the government’s policy of favoring one racial group for university admission and scholarship, these girls and women have to overcome the Taliban’s edict that bars them from going to school. It is a far greater barrier to overcome.

Without access to education, I would not be the person I am, able to do the things that matter to me most. I am a humanitarian doctor because of Wellesley College, a woman’s college with the mission “to provide an excellent liberal arts education to women who will make a difference in the world.”

We should never lose sight of the fact that educating girls and women will benefit our society in the long run. These women will pay it forward many times over what they have received.

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