The United Nations has again called on Taliban authorities to take “urgent action” to reopen secondary schools to girls in Afghanistan, calling their year-long closure “shameful” and “unparalleled anywhere in the world”.
“Sunday marks one year of exclusion for girls from secondary school in Afghanistan. A year of lost knowledge and opportunities they will never find again. Girls have their place in school. The Taliban must let them back,” tweeted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
When they came to power in the summer of 2021, the Taliban banned secondary schools for young girls. On March 23, the attempt to reopen the doors of colleges and high schools to them had lasted only a few hours.
The same day, the Taliban had turned around and announced their closure again, to the dismay of thousands of girls who had returned home in tears.
The Taliban have since maintained that the ban was linked only to a “technical problem” and that classes would resume once a program, based on Islamic precepts, had been defined.
According to the United Nations, “more than a million girls” mainly between the ages of 12 and 18 have been prevented from going to school during the past year, which is not the case for boys for whom schools were reopened on September 18.
“It is a tragic, shameful and entirely avoidable anniversary,” Markus Potzel, acting head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Manua), said in a statement on Sunday.
“The continued exclusion of girls from secondary school has no credible justification and has no equivalent anywhere in the world. It is deeply damaging for a generation of girls and for the future of Afghanistan,” he added.
“The denial of education violates the most fundamental rights of girls and women. It increases the risk of marginalization, violence, exploitation and abuse…”, insisted the Manua press release.
“It is the responsibility of the Taliban to create conditions conducive to peace, inclusion, security, human rights and economic recovery. The international community remains ready to support a government that is representative of the entire population and that respects their rights,” he concludes.
Since their return to power, the Taliban have imposed very strict rules on the conduct of women, especially in public life. In addition to closing secondary schools, Islamist fundamentalists have barred women from many government jobs. They also ordered them to cover themselves fully in public, ideally with a burqa.