Status…
Over 1.4 million girls and women in Afghanistan are denied their rights to education (UNESCO, 2024).
This adds to an already 2.5 million out-of-school girls before the Taliban seized power in 2021 (UNICEF, 2022).
The number of girls who cannot access tertiary education remains unknown
Why girl’s education
Today nearly are banned from attending secondary schools in Afghanistan
If all girls completed 12 years of schooling
An extra year of secondary school
Keeping girls out of high school
Taliban’s Educational Ban
Talibans return marked an abrupt rollback of women’s rights
Women are at risk of an erasure from public life and are denied their fundamental
human rights, including education, which severely limits Afghanistan’s potential for
social and economic development.
On This Day
Taliban 1.0
During the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan in the 1990s, women were denied their fundamental rights, chief among them access to education
Colleges Open, Schools Closed
When the Taliban seized power in 2021, they banned schools for girls at primary and secondary levels temporarily. Women could attend colleges and universities but had to be doing so in sex-segregated classrooms
Primary Schools Open, Secondary Schools Closed
Taliban, a month later, announced that girls could only attend primary schools, not secondary schools
But Secondary Schools Have to Remain Closed
Taliban announced the reopening of girls’ secondary schools, albeit the decision was short-lived, and the Taliban’s supreme leader overturned it hours later
Nothing But Primary Schools
Taliban issued a decree baring women and girls from attending colleges, universities, and private tutoring institutions, added to the secondary schools that were already banned
Three Years Later: An Indefinite Ban
A source from the Taliban’s Higher Education Ministry confirmed that the Taliban’s supreme leader and his ministers vow to “never open girls’ schools”
