The Taliban government in Afghanistan has agreed to permit Afghan women to attend universities in Pakistan, which is a major step forward.

They will only be permitted to go and remain in Pakistan, though, if their male guardians are given visas to go with them.

Hundreds of Afghan students competed for admission to graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs at institutions throughout Pakistan last week during entrance tests, which coincided with this announcement. Afghan students will take the tests online in the next few days, while Afghan refugees in Pakistan participated in the exams in Peshawar and Quetta.

Five thousand Afghan female Students

About 21,000 Afghan students have applied for the Allama Iqbal Scholarships for the next academic year, according to Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan's special ambassador to Afghanistan. Over 5,000 of these are female. With one-third of the places set out for women, the fully financed scholarship program hopes to send up to 2,000 students overseas.

The Taliban's conditional approval of the scholarship program was verified by a Pakistani government official, who also stated that Pakistan is dedicated to providing visas for the male guardians in order to guarantee adherence to Afghan law. According to the Express Tribune, the Taliban has not yet released an official statement regarding this arrangement.

Scholarships

With an emphasis on disciplines like computer science, engineering, medicine, and agriculture, the Allama Iqbal Scholarship program seeks to improve Pakistan-Afghan relations in both academia and diplomacy. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021, they severely restricted women's ability to travel without a male relative and banned girls from attending school past the sixth grade. This caused the program to be suspended.

This latest development is significant because the Taliban's restrictions on women's rights, which the UN has denounced as "gender apartheid," are coming under increasing international criticism.