On Monday, the United Nations banned the travel of two Taliban officials charged with education in a punitive response to the hardline Islamist movement’s severe restrictions on Afghan women and girls, diplomats told AFP. The United Nations has decided to expand the travel ban imposed on Taliban officials, which is extended every three months, to allow them to meet with officials from other countries abroad. And on Monday, the exemption expired, which was used by 15 Taliban officials.

The diplomat told AFP, asking not to be identified, that “the United Nations has decided to exclude Acting Assistant Education Minister Saeed Ahmed Shedhil and Acting Higher Education Minister Abdul-Baqi Basir Awal Shah, known as Abdul-Baqi Haqqani, from the exemption.” . And the two ministers are now banned from traveling abroad, the first punitive response from the United Nations to the measures introduced by the Afghan radical movement since it returned to power last August, especially its imposition of severe restrictions on girls’ education and women’s work.