Afghanistan: Taliban bans women from working in shopping malls and orders beauty salons closed within 10 days

In a new attack on women’s rightsthe Taliban government of Afghanistan forbade them to work in shopping malls and gave them time off 10 days to close the beauty centers from the country.

“The Taliban government has established a 10-day deadline for the closure of women’s salons‘, Emirati TV channel Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday, adding that Afghan authorities have also banned women from working in shopping malls.

The announcement comes weeks after Kabul ordered local and international NGOs suspend the hiring and work of female staff and vetoed the study of female students in the country’s public and private universities for “violating the laws of Islam”.

The deputy UN representative for Afghanistan, Markus Potzel, asked last Sunday the lifting the veto against women’s education and their work for NGOsduring a meeting with the Acting Taliban Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mohamed Khalid Hanafi.

According to a statement by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Potzel informed the Taliban minister that these bans they are an “act of discrimination against women” which prevent Afghans from receiving essential aid to survive,” reported the Europa Press news agency.

Furthermore, Potzel recalled the impact that these vetoes are having on the Afghan economy, for which he asked the minister to consider “its revocation urgently”, concludes the statement.

Potzel recently held another meeting with the Taliban minister of higher education, Mohamed Nadim, considered one of the most extremist elements of the fundamentalist movement, to whom he also asked for the urgent lifting of the bans which, according to Unama, could open a “new period of crisis of the country”.

Since they came to power, after the departure of US troops on August 30, 2021, the Taliban have asserted themselves and with them, women were losing numerous rights.

On December 24, the Taliban banned domestic and international NGOs from having or hiring female employees, claiming they did not respect Islamic dress rules that apply in the Muslim country.

A week earlier they had announced that women would no longer be able to attend university, and before that they had been barred from secondary education.

“They are recommended to implement the order to suspend women’s education until further notice,” reads the letter published by Minister Neda Mohammad Nadeem. Ministry spokeswoman Ziaulah Hashimi, who tweeted her, confirmed the order in a message sent to AFP.

The higher education ban comes less than three months after thousands of women took college entrance exams across the country.