The university admission requirements announced by the Ministry of Higher Education in Syria, restricting a number of specializations to males, raised criticism and fears about the narrowing of women’s opportunities for education and work under the new authorities, according to Agence France-Presse.
On September 30, the Ministry announced the admission requirements for the current academic year within a mechanism known as “differentiation,” to distribute students to universities and institutes according to their grades in high school and their desires.
The restrictions include programs at two universities specialized in military and security sciences created by the authorities in July, including the legal sciences program at the National University of Defense Sciences.
But both universities accept female students in other programs. The conditions do not prevent women from studying law, engineering, and media, which remain available to them in institutions, including the University of Damascus.
The restrictions also include civil institutions, including the specialty of radio and television directing at the Media Institute in Idlib. The Ministry allocated some oil and gas institutes for males this year, and specializations remained available to female students at Damascus University, the largest in the country.
The Ministry did not respond to questions sent by Agence France-Presse regarding the reasons for restricting admission to these specializations to males.
But a former ministry official told Agence France-Presse that not all of these restrictions are new.
However, the restrictions anger many people. Nanny Ahlam Othman considered her “an additional obstacle in the face of women in Syria.”
She told Agence France-Presse: “This is additional discrimination against Syrian women who already suffer from discrimination and persecution, and this must not be tolerated.”
Student Israa Salloum, who is preparing to apply for selection, said: “No one has the right to force me to choose a specific major or exclude me from a specific major.”
On the other hand, users of social media platforms defended the conditions, pointing out that there are other options available to females.
The controversy comes after the decision of the prestigious “Al-Hurriya Institute” school in Damascus to separate male and female students in the middle and high school levels last month. Its management denied that there was an official directive behind it.
Since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, measures taken by the new authorities, including dress codes on beaches, have raised concerns about personal freedoms.
Four Syrian feminist and civil organizations said in August that some of the authorities’ decisions “restricted personal and public freedoms, imposed patterns of social guardianship, and affected women in particular.”
From his field in southern Syria, Hassan Ahmed watches new fortification works carried out by the Israeli army, approaching day after day his village of Jabata al-Khashab, located in the Quneitra Governorate and adjacent to the occupied Golan.
Ahmed (46 years old), whose son and nephew were previously arrested by the Israeli army during its repeated incursions into the area, points with his hand and says: “This dirt berm is about 300 meters away. It is there behind the trees.”
He added: “Israeli bulldozers began digging this line... along the Golan Heights... Work stopped for a while, but was renewed” recently.
Ahmed, who insists on continuing to plant olive trees despite the fact that access to his land has become fraught with danger, continues: “They sometimes hinder my work as a farmer, especially this week in which many incursions took place.”
The Israeli army installed a yellow iron gate at the outskirts of the village to prevent residents from crossing toward its forces, according to Agence France-Presse correspondents. On the adjacent heights, the giant wind turbines that Israel built in the part it occupies of the strategic Golan Heights are clearly visible.
Since the overthrow of ousted President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israeli forces have penetrated outside the buffer zone adjacent to the Golan Heights, most of which they have occupied since 1967, reaching Mount Hermon separating Lebanon and Syria, and announced their intention to establish a demilitarized zone in southern Syria.
Media official in Quneitra Governorate, Muhammad Al-Saeed, says that the Israeli army “recently intended to escalate construction and military operations” inside the demilitarized zone. He added that the army “used bulldozers to dig trenches, dig earth mounds, and set up observation points.”
He points out that the new line being built by the Israeli army is “from 200 meters to one kilometer away from the ceasefire line specified in the 1974 agreement.” On Sunday, Syria denounced the new Israeli construction operations, considering that they constitute a “flagrant violation” of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement.
41 Syrians detained
In Quneitra Governorate, which is about forty kilometers south of Damascus, Israeli patrols repeatedly penetrate villages. Since late 2024, Israeli forces have detained 56 people, “41 of whom are still detained in unknown circumstances,” according to Al-Saeed.
On Wednesday, five Israeli army vehicles and an ambulance entered the village of Jubata al-Khashab. Eyewitnesses told Agence France-Presse journalists that soldiers shot a young man who tried to flee when he saw them. Farmer Muhammad Samia (65 years old) said: “They injured him in the foot and took him with them.”
The Israeli army released the man hours later, along with two others who had been arrested on Monday after they approached its forces. Muhammad Samia adds with a sigh: “Our affairs here are miserable and there is no work. We are afraid because they shoot people randomly.”
In the neighboring town of Khan Arnaba, vehicles of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) quietly pass by children returning from school.
Police officers regulate traffic, while members of the Ministry of Interior's security forces are deployed at crossroads in the area, without any presence of the Syrian army visible.
Forgive me, mother
Israel, which has launched hundreds of raids on Syria since the new authorities came to power after the overthrow of Assad, demands the disarmament of the south of the country, stressing that its forces will remain in the region.
The Syrian authorities condemn the Israeli "aggressions", but in return they are engaged in direct negotiations with Israel aimed at reaching a security agreement.
On Monday, the Israeli army said that it killed a man who tried to infiltrate one of its military sites within the “security zone” it occupies in southern Syria. In the village of Jeba, Khadija Shehadeh stares at a picture of her son, Muhammad Dabour, sobbing, after receiving his body.
The widow, surrounded by women wearing black, says: “He was 22 years old, and he was my only son,” adding: “He was working in Damascus as much as he could” to support his family.
The Red Cross delivered his body to his family on Monday. His uncle Muhammad Shehadeh said as he stood in front of his grave: “I saw the body of the martyr Muhammad Dabour. “I saw four bullets in his body, in his shoulder, chest, thigh and foot.”
The circumstances of the killing of Dabour, who was born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, are still unclear. His mother confirms that he was not linked to any political party, and that she was seeking to marry him. But before he disappeared on Sunday, he left her a message in which he wrote: “Forgive me, mother, you will never see me or hear my voice again.”
In a related matter, the Syrian Network for Human Rights published, on Thursday, documentation of Israeli military operations and the accompanying violations inside Syrian territory, since after the fall of the regime on December 8, 2024 until October 6, 2026.
The network recorded at least 453 ground incursions, concentrated in the Quneitra and Daraa governorates, and to a lesser extent in the Damascus countryside, in addition to the killing of at least 69 people, and at least 162 cases of arbitrary detention.
These numbers, which were verified according to the network’s methodology based on its database of violations, field monitoring, witness testimonies, and open and official sources, represent a documented minimum.
