Afghanistan\u2019s Ministry of Interior Affairs has said girls will be allowed to return to secondary schools soon.
Qari Saeed Khosty, a spokesman for the interior ministry, told Al Jazeera on Sunday that the exact timing will be announced by the Ministry of Education.
\u201cFrom my understanding and information, in a very short time all the universities and schools will be reopened and all the girls and women will return to school and their teaching jobs,\u201d he said.
Following the Taliban\u2019s takeover of Afghanistan, teenage girls were told to stay home from school until a \u201csafe learning environment\u201d could be established. But boys in all grades and girls of primary age were told to return to school.
The exclusion of older girls has aggravated fears that the Taliban could be returning to their hardline rule of the 1990s, when women and girls were legally barred from education and employment.
Khosti \u201cindicated that it was imminent that girls in secondary schools and their female teachers would be returning very soon,\u201d said Al Jazeera\u2019s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Kabul.
\u201cThis is something that we\u2019ve been hearing from the Taliban since they took power. Yes, they\u2019re going to return. But it\u2019s going to take time. And of course, that\u2019s taking a toll on a lot of the girls,\u201d she said.
\u201cThey want to go back to school, they want to continue their studies. This is also one of the demands of the international community for the Taliban to protect and safeguard the rights of girls and women to go to school and to work.\u201d
When the Taliban took power in August, the armed group promised to uphold the rights of girls and women. But its actions since have worried the international community.
It has sent mixed signals about women returning to work in government offices and has forced universities to enact policies of gender segregation in order to reopen.
It also named an all-male cabinet, saying women could be included later.
Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, earlier this month condemned the Taliban\u2019s \u201cbroken\u201d promises to Afghan women and girls and appealed to the group to fulfil their obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law.
\u201cBroken promises leads to broken dreams for the women and girls of Afghanistan,\u201d the UN chief said. \u201cWomen and girls need to be in the centre of attention.\u201d
The Taliban\u2019s rollback of women\u2019s rights has also prompted criticism from Qatar and Pakistan, which have called on the international community to engage with the Taliban.
At a news conference last month, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said it \u201chas been very disappointing to see some steps being taken backwards\u201d by the Taliban.
Al Thani said Qatar, which hosts the Taliban\u2019s political office, should be used as a model for how a Muslim society can be run. \u201cOur system is an Islamic system [but] we have women outnumbering men in workforces, in government and in higher education.\u201d
Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister Imran Khan meanwhile said that although he doubted the Taliban would once again place an outright ban on girls\u2019 education, the group should be reminded that Islam would never allow such a thing to happen again.
\u201cThe idea that women should not be educated is just not Islamic. It has nothing to do with religion,\u201d Khan told the BBC media outlet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghanistan\u2019s Ministry of Interior Affairs has said girls will be allowed to return to secondary schools soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c59-islamic-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n