Afghan women reportedly barred from studying nursing and midwivery

The Taliban’s supreme leader has reportedly ordered a ban on women attending nursing and midwivery institutes, closing a rare avenue they had to pursue an education beyond the sixth grade.

Human Rights Watch says the ban was ordered by Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and conveyed to the Ministry of Public Health on Monday, then communicated to private medical training institutes soon after.

Although the ban has yet to be formally announced, two government officials who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity, because of the matter’s sensitivity, confirmed it.

In addition, several nursing and midwivery students told NPR that this week, they were not allowed to attend classes.

The European Union has condemned the ban, while the United Nations chief mission in Afghanistan said it was “extremely concerned about a reported directive” that was preventing women and girls from attending private medical institutions.

The state of education for girls under Taliban rule

The ban reflects an ongoing Taliban effort to curtail education for girls beyond grade six.

Despite the Taliban’s policies, girls and women still have some options. In certain parts of the country, Taliban officials have quietly ignored the ban, allowing a small number of girls to take classes offered by private educational institutes and charities.

And in February 2024, an important loophole opened for women. Officials in the Ministry of Public Health successfully lobbied the hardline Taliban leaders to allow women to take nursing and midwifery courses in a handful of mostly private training institutes and learning centers, according to Ashley Jackson, who closely tracks developments in Afghanistan as co-director of the Center on Armed Groups, a think-tank based in Switzerland.

One motivation for this February decision was that in some provinces, the Taliban does not allow women to seek treatment from male medical professionals. 

“This new decree [banning women from nursing and midwifery training] will result in unnecessary pain, misery, sickness and death for the women forced to go without health care,” said Sahar Fetrat of Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

Students turned away from classes

Human Rights Watch says the ban was ordered by Taliban leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada and conveyed to the Ministry of Public Health on Monday, then communicated to private medical training institutes soon after.

Five Afghan women who were studying nursing and midwifery told NPR that they were turned away from their respective private institutions this week. They spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity to avoid being identified by authorities.

One 22-year-old nursing student said she learned about the ban when her friends began calling to express their condolences. “Are you telling the truth?” she said she asked them. The young woman went to her institute in case her friends were misinformed. One of her teachers “told us to go home. The institute is closed until further notice,” she said.

One 22-year-old, who was studying economics before all women were banned from university study in 2022, told NPR she signed up for nursing classes, desperate to continue studying.

She, too, rushed to her classes on Tuesday after word of the ban spread on social media, hoping it was a false rumor. She said the teachers were apologetic, “but unfortunately, we were not allowed to enter,” she said. “Unfortunately, we could not do anything.”

“This is bad news for all Afghan people,” she said angrily. “Because men cannot become midwives in Afghanistan.” Men are not allowed to be midwives because of strict gender segregation customs.

Challenges for medical education institutions

Even before this week’s news, medical education institutions have found it challenging to include women. “Medical schools have not been functioning as they should in the last three years,” said Pashtana Durrani, founder of Learn Afghanistan, an organization operating secret schools in Afghanistan as well as a maternal health clinic where they trained midwives. “All they are doing now is closing any loopholes” of the ban on higher education for females, she said.

“Many of us have faced increasing harassment from the authorities,” she said. “In just the last two weeks, our staffs were detained and they [the Taliban] asked us for money to be allowed to stay open,” she told NPR, adding that the constant harassment forced her organization’s schools to transition to online lessons. “We don’t have any in-person classes at all because they forced us into shutting down the last of our training program.”

“When we trained the younger women, I had hoped that maybe all these girls would graduate and establish their own institutions someday. But now that seems unlikely,” Durrani said.

“People often say that under the Taliban women are just left to reproduce. Well, now with this new ban, women are left to reproduce and then die on that same table because there will be nobody to help them. That’s what it has come to,” Durrani said.

Indeed, Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world for a woman to give birth. According to a December 2023 statement from Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, a woman dies every two hours across Afghanistan in birth-related complications.

And the United Nations Population Fund, which tracks women’s healthcare globally, reports that the country needs at least 18,000 more trained midwives to ensure basic maternal care to Afghan women.

The ban on women studying basic nursing skills “makes absolutely no sense. Even according to the Taliban’s own logic,” says Jackson of the Center on Armed Groups. She said that even during the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s, considered more extreme than the present government, they allowed women to take some medical courses.

Jackson also notes that previous exceptions — allowing women to study nursing and midwivery — shows that “there are people inside the system fighting for more sensible policies who realize that Afghanistan needs midwives, it needs female doctors, it needs female nurses.”

But ultimately, the commands of Akhundzada, their spiritual leader, take precedence. “We know that his beliefs are radical to the extreme,” Jackson says. “There’s a real paranoia and a fear of losing control, and I think one of the ways that he, as well as the Taliban in the past, have expressed that, is through the control of women’s bodies.”

Even as officials were turning away young Afghan women from health-care education this week, other Afghan women were hoping that soon, there would be some accountability for the Taliban’s denial of their human rights.

This week, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, said he could announce that ” very considerable progress has already been made in the investigation of allegations of gender persecution” in Afghanistan. “I am confident that I will soon be in a position to announce concrete results,” said Khan.

One researcher at Human Rights Watch, Fereshta Abbasi, believes that Khan’s statement indicates that he would “soon request applications for arrest warrants” for Taliban officials. Abbasi is from Afghanistan and currently lives in the United Kingdom.

“Justice will prevail,” she wrote on X.

With additional reporting by Fariba Akbari in Paris

With additional reporting by Fariba Akbari in Paris