Midwife Crisis

The Taliban in Afghanistan banned women from attending courses training them to be midwives and nurses, blocking women’s last route to higher education and creating a dire health threat in the country, the BBC reported.

This week, five private medical training institutions across Afghanistan confirmed to the BBC that the Taliban had instructed them to close indefinitely.

Women also reported being ordered not to return to their classes the following day. Videos circulated online of some students weeping at the news, as well as others singing in defiance as they left the training colleges. Women were recently banned from raising their voices.

“They even told us not to stand in the courtyard because the Taliban could arrive at any moment, and something might happen. Everyone was terrified,” one student told the BBC. “For many of us, attending classes was a small glimmer of hope after long periods of unemployment, depression, and isolation at home.”

Since the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August 2021, females cannot attend school after the sixth grade. The Taliban had promised to readmit girls into school once issues with the system were resolved, for example ensuring the curriculum was “Islamic,” but to date they have not kept this promise. As a result, 2.5 million females are missing from schools and universities, the United Nations said.

Training to be nurses or midwives in further education colleges was one of the few avenues still open to women seeking higher education and a career. Officials in the Ministry of Public Health successfully lobbied Taliban officials in February of 2024 to allow women to obtain nursing and midwife training, told NPR.

One motivation for this exception to the banning of higher education for women was that females are not allowed to receive medical treatment from male medics without a male guardian present.

Now, this new decree will have a dire impact on maternal health and women’s health in general, in a country with one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world, Human Rights Watch wrote.

“This new decree … will result in unnecessary pain, misery, sickness, and death for the women forced to go without health care,” said Human Rights Watch’s Sahar Fetrat.

About 17,000 women were enrolled in the courses. Meanwhile, a UN report last year estimated that Afghanistan needed an additional 18,000 midwives to meet the country’s needs.

“This is bad news for all Afghan people,” one student, turned away from her classes, told NPR. “Because men cannot become midwives in Afghanistan.”