MONITORING (SW) – The US State Department spokesman Ned Price has said the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate will face serious consequences if it does not reconsider the decision to close secondary schools and girls’ high schools ‘immediately’.
He told reporters yesterday that the rejection of the request for the reopening of girls’ schools would have a serious and significant impact on the bilateral and international ties.
“Their (Taliban) decision, as I mentioned before, it was a deeply disappointing one. It was, in some ways, an inexplicable reversal of the commitments that they had made to their own people. We’ve made the point previously that education is not only a human right, but it is indispensable to the success of any particular country. Holding back more than half of any country’s population is not a recipe for success for Afghanistan or anywhere else around the world”, he said.
He added no country can succeed economically, no country can succeed politically, no country can succeed on any basis when half of its population or more than half of its population is unable to go to school, ultimately unable to join the – join a workforce.
“Together with our partners in the international community, we have been working for some time and we continue to work to support education in Afghanistan, expecting that schools last month would have opened for all”, he said.
The State Department spokesman said the US has called on the Taliban to overcome whatever impediments exist to implementing the commitments they’ve made, to honor the commitments they’ve made to their own people. “Each day that Afghanistan’s secondary schools remain closed to girls is another missed day of school, another missed opportunity, not only for the girls of Afghanistan but for the people and the country of Afghanistan”, he said.
The Secretary, the Deputy Secretary, Tom West, our Special Representative for Afghanistan, our Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights Rina Amiri, our chargé d’affaires who is now based in Doha – they have all decried this decision on the part of the Taliban, he added.
Ned Price said the US has also done so in coordination with many of our close partners around the world.
“This was a topic of discussion during the extended troika that Tom West attended late last month in Tunxi, China, and we have been very clear that if this decision is not reversed and if it’s not reversed promptly, it will hold significant, serious implications for our ability to engage with the Taliban and the Taliban’s desire to have better relations not only with the United States but with the international community”, he said.
ENDS
