In Kabul to Fight for Rights of Women to Work, Says NRC Secretary General

Habibullah Agha added that female teachers of educational centers supported by international organisations can return to their jobs with proper Hijab.

In a letter issued on Sunday, the Taliban’s minister of education letter said that secondary and high schools above grade six will remain closed to Afghan girls until further notice.

This is despite the fact that in some provinces, local authorities have closed schools below grade 6 for female students.

After banning women from work, UN-supported educational centers in Kandahar and other provinces have stopped operations.

The UN supports nearly 1,600 educational classes in Kandahar alone, and about 50,000 boys and girls had been educated there, while the majority of teachers in these educational centers had been Afghan women.

In the meeting, Egeland urged the Taliban to allow women’s work in Afghanistan.

The NRC Secretary General added that the organisation has helped 850,000 Afghan citizens in the past six months and plans to support another 700,000 people in the future.

However, the Taliban's minister of refugees, said, "One or two kilos of aid will not solve the problem of Afghans."

Egeland had previously announced that without male and female employees, NRC cannot resume its activities in Afghanistan.

Bakhtar, the Taliban-controlled news agency, reported the details of the meeting of the UN envoy and the Taliban’s minister of higher education which took place on Saturday.

Since their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban officials have always described the ban on women's education as a "temporary" issue, but they have imposed more restrictions on girls and women over the past months.

The group never allowed women and girls education during their reign in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

The Taliban’s current minister of education is one of the most vocal critics of working women and women’s education among the group’s top leadership. He had previously made harsh and insulting comments about women's work, education, and sports in the previous government.

Farthing condemned these remarks on Twitter.

In his memoirs, Prince Harry said that during his military mission in Afghanistan, he killed 25 members of the Taliban and described them as "chess pieces being removed from the board".

Pen Farthing was one of the last Britons to leave Afghanistan after the Taliban took over the country in August 2021. Later, he returned to Afghanistan and since then has been working in the animal welfare sector.

Farthing's tweet criticising Prince Harry received over 375,000 views, and hundreds of responses.

Pakistan recently detained many Afghan immigrants for illegal stay in the country.

Earlier, the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed concern about the situation of Afghan refugees, especially their families and children in Pakistani prisons.

The detention of Afghan citizens in Pakistan has also drawn criticism from several political figures.

In the past year, with the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan and increasing poverty, the wave of migration of Afghans to neighbouring countries has intensified.