Afghanistan, on Wednesday, saw some public universities reopening their campuses to both male and female students after a long closure. A small number of women returned as the Taliban announced it opened public universities in six out of 34 of its provinces. The move comes ahead of mounting threats of international sanctions topped with inflation and hunger crisis in the country.

It was for the first time women could attend colleges since the Taliban takeover.

"I felt very anxious and the Taliban were guarding the building when we arrived, but they didn't bother us," a woman university student told the BBC.

The Culture and Information Ministry run by the Taliban said on Wednesday that public universities in the provinces of Nangarhar and Kandahar were now open for women. Later in the day, the order was extended for 4 other provinces - Helmand, Farah, Nimroz, and Laghman. The Taliban say that these six provinces had warmer climates than the rest of Afghanistan where the winters are bitterly cold, therefore universities were being opened there on priority. They describe it as an effort to eventually bring back both genders to university classrooms in Afghanistan.

But it is also well known that Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has been reportedly openly segregating students based on their gender.

According to an Amnesty International report from late 2021, women in Afghanistan were instructed that they could not go to work or travel without a male guardian (Marham).  In the initial days of the Taliban administration, girls over the age of 12 were prohibited from attending school, and segregation of women and men in universities was rampant. In most parts of the country, women were straightaway prohibited from getting educated beyond 7th grade.

Since the Taliban takeover, the Afghan government’s established Ministry of Women Affairs has been replaced by a Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Alongside that, the women have been expunged from the Cabinet.

Foreign governments, human rights organizations and international aid groups fear that the situation of women students would be the same as that of Taliban’s initial rule from 1996-2001. But the Taliban officials insist that things will be different for girls and women this time. They say that some form of education for them will be permitted, including graduate and postgraduate programs.

United Nations experts have denounced an “attempt to steadily erase women and girls from public life” in Afghanistan. They were pointing out the closure of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the occupation of the premises of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

They added, “Any humanitarian response, recovery or development efforts in the country, are condemned to failure if female staff, women-led organizations, and women in general - particularly those from minority communities - continue to be excluded from full participation in the needs assessments as well as in the decision-making, design, implementation and monitoring of these interventions,”

“Taken together, these policies constitute a collective punishment of women and girls, grounded on gender-based bias and harmful practices,” the UN experts said.

How is the Taliban responding to international pressure for equity in women’s education?

The reopening of public universities in Afghanistan comes after a recent round of talks between Taliban and Western officials in Norway in January this year. It was reported that the west was pressed on improving the rights of women in order to provide the inflation hit and starving Afghanistan, more foreign aid and the unfreezing of Afghanistan's overseas assets.

The halting of aid has worsened the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, which was already in tatters due to decades of fighting. The United Nations estimates that 95% of Afghans now do not have enough to eat. In such a situation, it becomes necessary for the Taliban to start respecting the demands of the west.

Speaking to journalists on Saturday, Zabihullah Mujahid, spokesman for Afghanistan’s government and deputy minister of culture and information, said that the Taliban’s education department would open classrooms for all girls and women in the Afghan New Year, which starts on March 21.

He added the reasons beyond weather conditions for the selective opening of universities, “In many provinces, the higher classes (girls’ school) are open, but in some places where it is closed, the reasons are economic crisis and the framework, which we need to work on in areas which are overcrowded. And for that we need to establish the new procedure.”

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan welcomed the announcement of the reopening of public universities for both male and female genders.