Fears of widening gender inequality in Afghanistan as Saudi Arabia joins calls to Taliban to keep university doors open to women

Female students stand outside a university in Kabul after Taliban security prevented them from entering on Wednesday. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 22 December 2022
Follow

Fears of widening gender inequality in Afghanistan as Saudi Arabia joins calls to Taliban to keep university doors open to women

  • The ultraconservative regime announced the immediate suspension of university education for women on Tuesday
  • Since returning to power, the Taliban has scrapped girls’ secondary education and removed women from public life

LONDON: Saudi Arabia has joined calls for the Taliban to reverse its decision to impose a ban on higher education for women in Afghanistan. It came a day after the group ordered women nationwide to stop attending private and public universities until further notice.

The Kingdom’s foreign ministry expressed surprise and regret at the decision and said it was met with astonishment in all Muslim countries. 

It said the decision denied Afghan women their full legal rights and the right to an education which contributes to supporting security, stability, development, and prosperity in Afghanistan.

Taliban security forces in the Afghan capital enforced the higher education ban for women by blocking their access to universities on Wednesday. Women were filmed weeping and consoling each other outside one campus in Kabul.

The Taliban leadership announced the latest restriction on the rights of women and girls in a terse statement late on Tuesday.

“You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,” said Neda Mohammad Nadeem, the Taliban’s minister for higher education.




Afghan women staged protests at the university in October after female students were expelled from dormitories. (AFP)

The announcement is only the latest in a series of ever-stricter restrictions on the freedoms of Afghan women, which now include mandatory face coverings and a ban on travel without a male escort.

Public frustration with the regime and its oppressive policies appears to be growing, in echoes of the current women-led protest movement in neighboring Iran, according to Afghanistan’s former national security adviser. 

“I think with every passing day, the Afghan people’s frustration is growing with the Taliban’s oppression,” Hamdullah Mohib, national security adviser to the deposed Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani, told the Arab News talk show “Frankly Speaking” in October. 

“If this situation continues, this oppression of the Afghan people continues, I’m certain that there will be mass mobilization in the country. It’s just a matter of when it will be.” 

Governments and religious authorities were quick to denounce Tuesday’s ban. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation said it was “seriously denting the credibility of the government.”

Qatar, which has played a key role in facilitating talks between the West and the Taliban, said everyone deserves the right to education and urged Afghanistan’s rulers to review the decision “in line with the teachings of the Islamic religion.”

Although it rejected the decision, Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan said that engagement with the Taliban was still the best path forward. 

“I still think the easiest path to our goal, despite having a lot of setbacks when it comes to women’s education and other things, is through Kabul and through the interim government,” Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the Pakistani foreign minister, said.

The US immediately denounced the ban and warned that the Taliban regime faces further isolation from the rest of the world.

“The Taliban should expect that this decision, which is in contravention to the commitments they have made repeatedly and publicly to their own people, will carry concrete costs for them,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, said.




The Taliban have increasingly restricted women’s access to education. (AFP)

“They have seriously, possibly even fatally, undermined one of their deepest ambitions … and that is an improvement and betterment of relations with the US and the rest of the world.

“This unacceptable stance will have significant consequences for the Taliban and will further alienate the Taliban from the international community and deny them the legitimacy they desire.”

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, was “deeply alarmed” by the ban, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday.

Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said she would put the issue on the agenda of the G7 club of wealthy nations, of which Germany currently holds the presidency.

In the 20 years between the Taliban’s two reigns, girls were allowed to go to school and women were able to seek employment in all sectors, though the country remained socially conservative.

The return of the Taliban has dramatically rolled back these moderate gains. A recent survey of women inside Afghanistan, cited by the UN, found that only 4 percent of women reported always having enough food to eat, while a quarter said their income had dropped to zero.

 

Family violence and femicide have reportedly increased, and 57 percent of Afghan women are married before the age of 19, the survey found. There are even cases of families selling their daughters and their possessions to buy food.    

The Taliban’s treatment of women could also be worsening the situation for Afghanistan as a whole. Keeping women out of work costs Afghanistan up to $1 billion, or 5 percent of gross domestic product, according to the UN. 

Studies have also shown that each additional year of schooling can boost a girl’s earnings as an adult by up to 20 percent with further impacts on poverty reduction, better maternal health, lower child mortality, greater HIV prevention, and reduced violence against women. 

“The status of Afghan girls and women has rarely been good, even when the Taliban weren’t in power,” Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Wilson Center, told Arab News.

“But this rapid-fire succession of restrictions on their dress, movement, work, and education is taking them back to a point that they haven’t been in since the 1990s when the Taliban were last in control.




Governments and religious authorities were quick to denounce Tuesday’s ban. (AFP)

“I’d argue things could get worse now than they were in the 1990s because today, unlike back then, the Taliban have control over the entire country and there are no substantive pockets of resistance. This means pushback against these types of policies will be even tougher to pull off than it was in the 1990s.”

The US beat a rushed retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021 after reaching a shaky peace deal with the Taliban. Since then, the country has been plunged into economic crisis, poverty and international isolation.  

During negotiations in Doha, the Taliban sought to convince the world it had changed since its previous stint in power from 1996 to 2001, when an extreme interpretation of Islam saw women and girls barred from education and public life, and widespread suppression of free expression.  

However, on returning to power, the regime reimposed many such restrictions, obliterating two decades of modest progress on women’s rights and the nation’s institutional development.  

“It’s painful to say, but this decision isn’t that surprising,” said Kugelman. “For months, the Taliban have been reimposing many of their most draconian policies from the 1990s, and so this is just the latest step — an especially traumatic one for Afghan women and girls — of their ongoing strategy to impose their dreadful ideology across society.”

The Taliban had initially promised to soften its more extreme stances, saying it would honor human rights obligations, including those of women. Nevertheless, just a month after returning to power, the regime imposed gender-segregated university entrances and classrooms and imposed hijabs as part of a compulsory dress code. 

Then, on March 23 this year, when girls’ secondary schools were scheduled to reopen, the Taliban abruptly rescinded the directive, barring tens of thousands of teenage girls from receiving an education. Primary school-aged girls, at least for now, are still permitted to receive schooling up until the sixth grade.

In May, the Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada ordered women to fully cover themselves, including their faces, in public, to remain at home, and to only travel between cities with a male escort. In November, a new directive banned women from entering parks, funfairs, gyms and public baths. 

There have been conflicting messages from high-ranking officials concerning the education of women and girls, which could be indicative of a schism within the Taliban ranks between the hard line based in the movement’s Kandahar stronghold and the more moderate officials managing affairs from the capital.  

“To be sure, plenty of Taliban leaders reject this move,” said Kugelman. “The fact that it still happened is a reflection of the ideological divides within the group as well as of the power of the Kandahar-based supreme Taliban leader and his allies. 




​​The Taliban leadership announced the latest restriction on the rights of women and girls in a terse statement late on Tuesday. (AFP)

“They’re the most ideologically hard-line faction within the Taliban, and it’s here where power — including veto power to reverse moves made by leaders in Kabul — truly lies.”

Unless the Taliban shows it is willing to soften its hardline approach, particularly on matters relating to women’s rights, the regime is unlikely to gain access to billions of dollars in desperately needed aid, loans and frozen assets held by the US, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. 

“The international community can and will offer its condemnations of the move and its expressions of solidarity for Afghan girls and women, and that’s the right thing to do. But at the end of the day, there’s little it can do of substance that can change this sad state of affairs,” said Kugelman.

“The Taliban aren’t about to moderate their core ideology, and the top leadership doesn’t care if this closes off opportunities for international financial assistance and formal diplomatic recognition. What matters to those calling the shots within the Taliban is that their core ideology continues to be imposed across the country.”

Although Kugelman acknowledges there is widespread opposition among Afghans to the Taliban’s mounting restrictions, he doubts civil society has the means — at least for the time being — to threaten the regime’s authority.

“To be sure, potential internal resistance is something to watch. Already we’ve seen male students walk out of their classrooms in solidarity with their female classmates, and that’s a key data point. Afghanistan may have a patriarchal society, but that doesn’t mean that the country — including its men — will just want to shrug this off,” he said.

“But the question at hand is not a lack of will to resist, but a lack of capacity. The Taliban rule with an iron fist, and unless there are protests that grow so big they can’t control them, they will likely not hesitate to curb any dissent and opposition to this move.”


Saudi crown prince, Macron discuss repercussions of Israel-Iran clash

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Saudi crown prince, Macron discuss repercussions of Israel-Iran clash

RIYADH: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and France's President Emmanuel Macron had a phone call on Friday to discuss the latest developments in the region, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

The two leaders discussed the repercussions of Israeli strikes on Iran, which has killed 78 people, including generals and scientists, and wounded 320 others.

Iran retaliated later in the day, raining missiles and weaponized drones on Israeli cities, causing destruction.

In their phone conversation, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Macron "emphasized the necessity of making every effort to de-escalate the situation, the importance of exercising restraint, and resolving all disputes through diplomatic means," the SPA report said.

Macron had earlier announced that a UN conference on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians that France and Saudi Arabia planned to co-chair next week in New York had been postponed because of the Israel-Iran clash.

"While we have to postpone this conference for logistical and security reasons, it will take place as soon as possible," Macron said at a press conference.
 


How Saudi Arabia’s OceanQuest is making waves in global marine conservation

Updated 14 June 2025
Follow

How Saudi Arabia’s OceanQuest is making waves in global marine conservation

  • OceanQuest is a Saudi non-profit focused on deep-sea exploration and global marine science collaborations
  • On its Around Africa Expedition, the foundation emphasized human-centered approaches to conservation

RIYADH: As the curtains closed on this year’s UN Ocean Conference in the French city of Nice, the Saudi-led foundation OceanQuest emerged as one of the standout contributors to marine sustainability — not only in policy circles but also in the depths of the world’s oceans.

Fresh from its pioneering Around Africa Expedition, OceanQuest, in partnership with OceanX, brought remarkable scientific discoveries and a powerful message to UNOC — that true marine conservation must combine exploration, collaboration, and education.

“This expedition went around Africa and engaged on-ship around 16 African scientists and more than 200 port stops,” Martin Visbeck, CEO of OceanQuest, told Arab News.

From surveying megafauna by helicopter to exploring seamounts more than 1,000 meters beneath the surface aboard the OceanXplorer, the team used cutting-edge technology and human ingenuity to illuminate previously uncharted ecosystems.

OceanQuest is a Saudi non-profit incubated at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. It is rapidly becoming a key player in the global marine science arena, dedicated to deep-sea exploration, design innovation, and cross-border collaboration.

DID YOU KNOW?

• OceanQuest is a Saudi non-profit focused on deep-sea exploration and global collaborations in marine science.

• The foundation emphasizes human-centered approaches to conservation by training African scientists and educators.

• Discoveries on its Around Africa Expedition include new seamounts vital for biodiversity and sustainable fisheries.

One of its flagship missions — the Around Africa Expedition — offered not only new data but a model of inclusive, equitable marine science.

Using robotic vehicles, manned submersibles, and remote sensing tools, the team made multiple dives during the mission.

In total, they spent 53 hours underwater, collected nearly 90 samples, and mapped thousands of square kilometers of the seabed, including around the Nola Seamounts and Santo Antao Island. Flights over 922 nautical miles provided additional data on large marine animals.

Among the major outcomes was the identification of new underwater seamounts, crucial for fisheries and marine biodiversity.

“We will be the ones who go to seamount systems and explore what is there, look at the species, look at the functions and understanding, then share that with the community, to provide reasons why certain seamounts should be protected,” said Visbeck.

This insight is critical as countries consider the ratification and implementation of the High Seas Treaty — formally the Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction agreement — a major focus at UNOC.

OceanX and OceanQuest have successfully completed their ground-breaking ‘Around Africa Expedition,’ a collaborative journey that explored Africa’s vast and diverse marine environments. (Supplied)

“Biodiversity protection beyond national jurisdiction means the protected areas in the high seas, outside of a country’s own legal role,” said Visbeck.

OceanQuest’s approach is not just technical — it is human-centered.

Working alongside top African entities such as the National Research Foundation, the University of Cape Town, and the South African National Biodiversity Institute, the expedition helped build capacity for African marine science.

Twenty-four early-career professionals from across the continent were trained in seafloor mapping, environmental DNA analysis, and deep-sea sampling.

“This wasn’t just about what we discovered in the ocean. It was also about who we empowered on the ground,” said Visbeck. “By investing in people — students, young professionals and educators — we’re building a foundation for Africa’s long-term leadership in ocean science.”

He sees this collaborative model as a roadmap for future conservation.

“These collaborations are the future of ocean science in Africa,” he said. “We’ve seen what’s possible when scientists, governments and regional institutions align behind a common purpose, advancing knowledge, access and opportunity.”

This year’s UNOC provided the perfect platform for OceanQuest to share these achievements and ambitions.

“I decided that it would be amazing to celebrate and launch OceanQuest and share with the ocean world our arrival on the scene at UNOC,” said Visbeck.

Over 24 participants from several countries, like Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa, were able to have a first-hand experience through the Early Career Ocean Professionals program. (Supplied)

“We are using UNOC to celebrate with our partners, friends and ocean-policy people on the scene and share with them our mission and vision.”

In a time of mounting ocean crises — from plastic pollution to overfishing and climate change — Visbeck says awareness is a powerful tool.

“What we are trying to do is fight ignorance by providing data and information. Once the information is more clear, it can be a basis for regulatory agencies.”

From the Red Sea to the high seas, OceanQuest is helping reframe the future of ocean conservation — not just by mapping the seafloor, but by drawing a new map for global cooperation.
 

 


King Salman orders Saudi officials to aid stranded Iranian Hajj pilgrims

Updated 14 June 2025
Follow

King Salman orders Saudi officials to aid stranded Iranian Hajj pilgrims

  • Directive issued after authorities in Tehran close their airspace following attack by Israel said to have targeted Iranian nuclear sites, nuclear scientists and military chiefs
  • Plan for the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah to provide help to the stranded pilgrims presented to the king by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

RIYADH: King Salman on Friday ordered Saudi authorities to ensure that Iranian Hajj pilgrims stranded in the Kingdom receive all necessary support until it is safe for them to return home.

The directive came shortly after Israeli authorities launched early-morning airstrikes against Iran, which they said targeted nuclear sites, nuclear scientists and military chiefs. Tehran closed the country’s airspace in the aftermath.

The plan to provide help to stranded Iranian pilgrims was presented to the king by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Press Agency reported. The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has been tasked with ensuring they receive all necessary support.

The annual pilgrimage, a key pillar of Islam that all Muslims are required to complete at least once during their lives if physically and financially able, concluded on Monday. Tens of thousands of Iranians visit Saudi Arabia for Hajj each year. More than 1.6 million pilgrims from all over the world took part this year and authorities described it as a success.

Iran retaliated to the Israeli attack later on Friday by targeting Tel Aviv with missiles, raising fears of prolonged and more-dangerous exchanges of fire.


Saudi crown prince, President Trump discuss regional tensions in phone call

Updated 13 June 2025
Follow

Saudi crown prince, President Trump discuss regional tensions in phone call

  • Two leaders stressed the importance of restraint and de-escalation, and underlined the need to resolve disputes through diplomatic means

RIYADH: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a phone call with US President Donald Trump to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, including the ongoing Israeli military operations against Iran, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

During the call on Friday, the two leaders stressed the importance of restraint and de-escalation, and underlined the need to resolve disputes through diplomatic means, SPA added.

They also affirmed the importance of continued joint efforts to promote security, peace, and stability across the region.


Makkah’s Two Holy Mosques Architecture Exhibition unveils 1,400 years of sacred architecture

Updated 13 June 2025
Follow

Makkah’s Two Holy Mosques Architecture Exhibition unveils 1,400 years of sacred architecture

  • Immersive experience showcases history, transformation of Islam’s most sacred sites
  • Exhibition fuses traditional and contemporary Islamic design, with rare artifacts, architectural models on display

MAKKAH: Visitors to Makkah are being offered an unprecedented journey through Islamic architectural history, showcasing the remarkable evolution of the Grand Mosque and Prophet’s Mosque across 14 centuries of development.

The Two Holy Mosques Architecture Exhibition, housed in a renovated 1,200 sq. meter facility in the Um Al-Joud neighborhood, is presenting rare artifacts and architectural models that document the transformation of Islam’s most sacred sites.

The Two Holy Mosques Architecture Exhibition, housed in a renovated 1,200-square-meter facility in the Um Al-Joud neighborhood, is presenting rare artifacts. (SPA)

The exhibition building itself exemplifies the fusion of traditional and contemporary Islamic design, with architectural elements deliberately echoing the Grand Mosque’s distinctive style.

According to the Saudi Press Agency, this design philosophy creates an immersive environment in which visitors experience visual and cultural connections to the sacred spaces.

FASTFACT

The exhibition building exemplifies the fusion of traditional and contemporary Islamic design, with architectural elements deliberately echoing the Grand Mosque’s distinctive style.

Following comprehensive upgrades, the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque has launched the exhibition’s trial operations phase. The modernization included complete technical infrastructure overhauls, contemporary presentation methods for historical artifacts, and sophisticated lighting systems that illuminate intricate details while enhancing the visitor experience.

The Two Holy Mosques Architecture Exhibition, housed in a renovated 1,200-square-meter facility in the Um Al-Joud neighborhood, is presenting rare artifacts. (SPA)

The exhibition’s renewed mission extends beyond simple display, aiming to transmit the Two Holy Mosques’ heritage to both Islamic communities and global audiences, the SPA said.

Through interactive experiences and educational programming, the facility seeks to broaden understanding of Islamic architectural principles, while connecting contemporary visitors with their civilizational roots.

Those interested in visiting can schedule appointments through the official booking portal at https://visits.alharamain.gov.sa/