Taliban official says Islam grants women right to education, work

A high Taliban official tells Al Jazeera that the group is working to create a so-called ‘secure setting’ for ladies in colleges and the office.

Taliban had promised girls's rights and media freedom after returning to energy on August 15, 2021, nevertheless it has since backed away from its pledge [File: Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP]

A Taliban official has mentioned that Islam grants girls the suitable to training, work, and entrepreneurship, and reiterated that the group is working to create a so-called “secure setting” for women and girls in secondary colleges and the office.

“I have to say that Islam has given girls the suitable to training, Islam has given girls the suitable to work, Islam has given girls the suitable to entrepreneurship,” Taliban spokesperson of the Ministry of Vice and Advantage, Sadeq Akif Muhajir, instructed Al Jazeera.

“If Islam has allowed it, who am I to ban it,” he mentioned throughout the interview.

The feedback by Muhajir got here greater than a 12 months after the armed group took over the nation and imposed a number of limitations on girls’s freedoms, together with a ban on secondary training for ladies.

The transfer has drawn worldwide condemnation and sanctions.

Since returning to energy, the Taliban has amongst different issues, shut down women’ secondary colleges throughout the nation, ordered girls to put on hijabs within the office and to cowl their faces in public, and has banned girls from travelling lengthy distanced with out a shut male family member.

The restrictions on freedoms and actions are paying homage to the Taliban’s final time in energy within the Nineties, when the group denied women and girls the suitable to training and barred them from public life.

The armed group had promised girls’s rights and media freedom after returning to energy on August 15, 2021. However it has since backed away from its pledge.

The Taliban has defended its determination, saying such restrictions have been achieved to protect “nationwide curiosity” and girls’s “honour”.

Afghanistan’s financial woes

Muhajir mentioned there are at present “many ladies’ working in numerous ministries, together with “individuals from the earlier authorities”.

“I'm working to create a state of affairs the place they'll work in a means that protects their honour,” he mentioned. “It shouldn’t be in a means prefer it was within the earlier administration.”

However a examine by the Worldwide Labor Group (ILO) this 12 months discovered that Afghan girls’s employment ranges fell by an estimated 16 % in the months instantly following the Taliban takeover. In distinction, male employment dropped by 6 %.

“Within the pessimistic state of affairs by which restrictions intensify and girls don't really feel they'll safely present up at their workplaces, the size of job losses for girls may attain 28 %,” the report mentioned.

Working Afghan girls have beforehand instructed Al Jazeera that whereas the Taliban has in a roundabout way fired feminine authorities staff, it has restricted girls from getting into workplaces and has paid them a notably lowered wage to stay at house.

The Taliban’s return to energy has exacerbated Afghanistan’s financial woes. The nation has been reeling from a humanitarian disaster with greater than half of the inhabitants going through starvation.

The Western-imposed sanctions and the freezing of almost $10bn in Afghan central financial institution belongings by the US have largely contributed to the collapse of the financial system.

The Taliban has been criticised for imposing restrictions on girls as an alternative of specializing in saving Afghanistan from financial smash.

The diplomatic isolation of the federal government led by the Taliban has additional worsened the state of affairs, with Western nations urgent the group to permit extra freedoms to girls as a situation for engagement.