The Taliban allegedly ordered the suspension of medical education for women and girls in Afghanistan, a move that the U.S. government denounced on Wednesday.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement that this directive is an unjustified attack on women’s access to health care and education, and that it is the most recent in a series of initiatives that threaten the lives and rights of Afghan women and girls.
The Taliban have gradually reduced women’s rights since regaining control in August 2021 with the withdrawal of American-led forces, including prohibiting girls from going to school past the sixth grade. In an attempt to eradicate Afghan women and girls from public life, the Taliban drafted vice regulations in August that forbid women’s voices and bare faces in public.
One of the few remaining educational options for women in the nation was medical school, which included nursing and midwifery.
According to Blinken, these directives, when combined with the prohibition on women pursuing medical education, further endanger the lives, health, and safety of all Afghans, not just women and girls.
He urged the Taliban to revoke the directive and any earlier ones that prevented women from exercising their fundamental liberties and human rights.
The Taliban have not officially responded to the reports or acknowledged the directive, which is reportedly affecting both public and private organizations. Requests for response on Thursday were not immediately answered by a Taliban spokeswoman or a health ministry spokesperson.
Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world, therefore preventing women from pursuing medical school would have a significant impact on women’s health, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), a local organization.
The group’s country representative in Afghanistan, Mickael Le Paih, stated in a statement that a health care system cannot function without trained female healthcare professionals.
According to the group, the country’s lack of female healthcare staff and gender-segregated hospital wards already have an impact on the availability of healthcare.
According to Le Paih, all genders must provide critical services if they are to be accessible to all.
Human Rights Watch said in a statement last week that the new order will cause needless suffering, illness, and death for the women who are forced to forgo health care because there won’t be any female medical professionals to treat them because the Taliban have prohibited women from receiving treatment from male medical professionals in some provinces.
The United Nations Population Fund states that in order to satisfy demand, Afghanistan urgently needs 18,000 more midwives.
The Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose members have harshly criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, including a bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members and nearly 200 Afghans, heard Blinken’s statement on Wednesday.
According to Blinken, the disengagement agreement that President Donald Trump struck with the Taliban in 2020 during his first term was the cause of many of the disasters.
According to him, President Biden had to decide whether to escalate the conflict or put a stop to it. Attacks on our forces and friends would have resumed, and the Taliban’s onslaught on the nation’s major cities would have begun, had he not fulfilled his predecessor’s pledge.
Blinken refuted accusations made by Republican members, including the committee’s chair, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, that the Biden administration failed to predict the speed at which the U.S.-backed Afghan government would fall apart and disregarded warnings about it from lower-ranking U.S. officials.
According to McCaul, this disastrous incident marked the start of a failing foreign strategy that set the world on fire.
Taliban refugee minister Khalil Haqqani and two other people were killed in a suicide attack at the Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Wednesday. He was the first cabinet member to be killed in an Afghan bombing and the most well-known victim since the Taliban took back power.
The State of Islam The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group’s affiliate, Khorasan Province.
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