About 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan have been denied access to secondary education since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. The United Nations stated this on Tuesday, calling for an end to such “discrimination”.
The Taliban government, recognized only by Russia, has imposed a series of restrictions on women, which the UN has characterized as “gender apartheid”. Girls are banned from attending school beyond the primary level, and the Taliban justify this with their own interpretation of Islamic law.
The number of girls without access to secondary school has increased by 200,000 compared to last year and could reach nearly four million by 2030 if the ban remains in place. This was reported by UNESCO, the UN’s educational and cultural organization. The organization called for the immediate restoration of their right to education and condemned the “discrimination against women and girls”.
Increased restrictions and economic losses
The Taliban government, which promised a more moderate rule after returning to power in August 2021, has imposed extensive restrictions on women, banning them from attending universities, public parks, gyms, and beauty salons. Girls were banned from attending secondary schools in March 2022, and universities were closed to young women later that same year.
These restrictions undo two decades of progress in expanding access to education. If in 2001 girls’ access to education was severely limited, by 2021 nearly one million girls were receiving secondary education, UNESCO noted.
“Afghan girls and women have the right to education, it is a basic human right,” said Hoda Jaberian, UNESCO’s coordinator of education programs in emergencies. “They have the right to work. They should have freedom of movement.”
The ban on education also leads to significant economic losses. According to UNESCO estimates, the restrictions on women and girls will cost Afghanistan 9.6 billion US dollars by 2066.
Afghanistan’s education sector as a whole is in crisis: more than half of primary school-age children do not attend school at all. According to UNESCO, over 90 percent of ten-year-old children cannot read a simple text. The crisis is exacerbated by the lack of drinking water, adequate sanitation, and heating in schools, as well as natural disasters, including earthquakes that have repeatedly struck the country in recent years. More than seven million Afghans have returned or been forced to return to the country since 2023, putting additional pressure on the education system, the UN agency reported.
Source: South China Morning Post
