Iran Ready to Provide Higher Education to Afghan Girls after Taliban’s Ban
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An Iranian Foreign Ministry official expressed the country’s readiness to provide university education for Afghan women after the Taliban barred female students from attending private and public universities across Afghanistan.
The director general of the West Asia department at Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet that he has held talks with the caretaker of Afghanistan’s embassy in Tehran, Abdul Qayyum Soleimani, about the Taliban’s announcement that Afghan women could no longer attend university.
Rasoul Mousavi said he has voiced Iran’s readiness to help resolve the problem posed to female Afghan university students in various ways, such as by providing online university courses and allowing them to use the infrastructures available in Iran.
In a statement on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Tehran is sorry to hear about the obstacles being put in the way of university education for girls and women in Afghanistan.
He said Iran hopes that the people in charge in Afghanistan would immediately remove the obstacles and allow for the resumption of the Afghan girls’ access to education at schools and universities, so that the female students would enjoy the right to education and play a more active role in the development and prosperity of Afghanistan.
The Taliban-run higher education ministry has announced that female students would not be allowed access to the country’s universities until further notice.
“You all are informed to immediately implement the mentioned order of suspending the education of females until further notice,” said a letter issued to all government and private universities, signed by the Minister for Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric has described the move as “troubling”.