The Taliban has ordered all higher education institutions in Afghanistan to ban women from attending classes, in the latest restriction on women.
The announcement on Tuesday Dec. 20 came just a few months after students had completed university entrance exams.
“You all are informed to implement the mentioned order of suspending education of females until further notice,” the announcement from Afghanistan’s minister of higher education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, read.
Previously, the Taliban had only allowed women to attend university as long as classes were segregated by gender.
At the same time, only women professors and older men were allowed to teach women students.
Women were also restricted from obtaining degrees in journalism, engineering, economics, agriculture, and veterinary science according to the BBC.
Just last year, the Taliban banned girls from going to middle and high school after it announced that secondary schools were re-opening for boys.
The government denied banning girls from school, saying they needed to build “safer and better educational environment” and rethink girls’ uniforms to follow Islamic law.
At the moment, only elementary schools are opened to girls, but classes are segregated starting from fourth grade.
Since its takeover, the Taliban has ordered all women in Afghanistan to wear burqas covering themselves from head to toe when going out in public.
Women have also been banned from traveling across the country without a male chaperone.
Women’s rights organizations and the international community has condemned the Taliban’s mounting restrictions on women and girls.
During its rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, banning girls and women from going to school and working and requiring them to be accompanied by a male relative and wear a burqa at all times in public.
Women who disobeyed were whipped or executed. Cultural activities and media, such as art, movies and music, were also prohibited.
