Kabul - (AFP) - The Taliban Minister of Higher Education justified Thursday the ban on women entering universities in Afghanistan, saying that they "do not respect the dress code", while the G7 foreign ministers denounced the measures taken against women, saying that they could be considered " A crime against humanity."

In a brief message on Tuesday evening, Minister of Higher Education Nada Mohamed Nadeem ordered all public and private universities in the country to stop female education until further notice.

On Thursday, he justified this decision by saying that "those female students who were going to university... did not respect the instructions regarding hijab. Hijab is obligatory in Islam," referring to the obligation to cover a woman's head, face and body completely.

The minister noted that the girls, who were studying in a province far from their home, "did not travel with a mahram, an adult male companion."

"Our Afghan honor does not allow a young Muslim woman from a province to be present in a distant province without her father, brother or husband accompanying her," he said.

On Thursday, UNESCO "strongly" condemned the Taliban's decision, calling for its "immediate repeal". "UNESCO condemns the Taliban's decision to deny women access to universities, which comes after 15 months of excluding girls from secondary school," she said. It denounced "a gross violation of human dignity and the basic right to education."

The Taliban increased restrictions on freedoms, especially against women, who were gradually excluded from public life and excluded from secondary schools.

Women were also excluded from most public jobs or given low wages to keep them at home.

Women are no longer allowed to travel without a male family member and must wear the burqa. In November, the movement banned women from parks, gardens, gyms, and public swimming pools.

The decision to prevent them from entering the university shocked the country, and sparked international condemnation.

On Thursday, the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven countries said that the Taliban's treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan could be considered a "crime against humanity."

"The Taliban's policies designed to exclude women from public life will have consequences for how our country deals with the Taliban," they said in a statement.

In the morning, about twenty Afghan women defied the regime by demonstrating on a Kabul street to defend their right to study.

Policewomen stopped a number of women, a protester told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Two were released during the day, but a number of them remained in detention, according to the same source.

And after the demonstration was scheduled to be held in front of the campus of Kabul University, which is the largest and most famous in the country, it was moved to another location due to the heavy deployment of the security forces.

Such gatherings are becoming increasingly rare in Afghanistan since the arrest of prominent women activists earlier this year, while journalists are also prohibited from covering them.

The day after the announcement, armed guards were posted in front of a number of universities to prevent demonstrators from entering campuses.

A female student, who refused to reveal her identity for fear of retaliation from the Taliban, whose members were patrolling the vicinity of her institution, said, "We are helpless...we have lost everything."

The decision was met with the resentment of Afghan female students, especially since it came less than three months after allowing thousands of young women to take university entrance exams.

Although the Taliban pledged, after returning to power in August 2021, to show greater flexibility, it soon returned to its very strict interpretation of Sharia law that characterized its rule between 1996 and 2001.

And in a surprise coup on March 23, the movement closed secondary schools a few hours after reopening them.

Several Taliban officials said there were not enough teachers or money, and that schools would reopen once an Islamic curriculum was developed.

During the twenty years of the presence of international forces in Afghanistan, the various governments that ruled the country with the support of the West allowed girls to go to school and women to work, although the country remained socially conservative.