A senior Taliban official has spoken out against a ban on education for women and girls in Afghanistan.
on Sunday, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai said: “We have deprived women of their rights”.
It comes days after activist Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders to support a right to education for women and girls living under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Taliban
The Taliban is an extremist Islamist group that held power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. In 2021, it seized power again after the U.S. and allies including Australia withdrew troops from Afghanistan.
The Taliban has since imposed, including banning them from high schools, universities, and most forms of employment.
Senior UN officials have described Afghanistan under Taliban rule as “the most repressive country in the world for women’s rights”.
Stanikzai
On Sunday, Stanikzai spoke at a graduation ceremony for an Islamic school in the south-east Afghanistan city of Khost.
Stanikzai said: “We have deprived women of their rights, no inheritance, no right to choose their husbands, giving them away as compensation in disputes, not allowing them education… Are we truly following Shariah?”
Shariah is the name for Islamic laws.
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He said the Taliban is being “unjust” to around 20 million women and girls “out of a population of 40 million.“
Previous talks
This week’s comments are not the first time Stanikzai has criticised the Taliban’s laws.
In September 2022, Stanikzai spoke at a Taliban gathering in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
At the time, speaking to the Taliban, he said: “Women must get education, there is no Islamic prohibition for girls’ education.”
The Talibanin December 2022.
Malala Yousafzai
On 14 January, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai addressed Muslim leaders. She spoke at the Muslim World League conference in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
Yousafzai called on leaders to “protect every girl’s right to go to school for a complete 12 years.”
She urged attendees at the conference “to openly challenge and denounce the Taliban’s oppressive laws.”
The activist said: “The path forward for Afghanistan lies in political solutions instead of military force”.
