The UN on Sunday urged the Taliban in Afghanistan to reopen high schools for girls, calling the closure that began exactly a year ago “tragic and shameful.” This “Sunday marks a year of exclusion of girls from schools high schools in Afghanistan.
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A year of lost learning and opportunities that will never be recovered. Girls have their place in schools. The Taliban must let them back,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote on Twitter.
After coming to power in August 2021, the Taliban banned secondary education for girls. On March 23, they were authorized to return, but a few hours later they again forbade them to go to school.
The Taliban say the ban is linked to a “technical problem” and that classes will resume once a program based on Islamic precepts is defined.
Sunday marks one year since girls were banned from attending high school in Afghanistan.
A year of lost knowledge and opportunity that they will never get back.
Girls belong in school. The Taliban must let them back in.
— Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) September 18, 2022
“It was a gloomy year, a year full of stress and disappointment,” an 18-year-old student questioned by AFP testified anonymously. “Society needs female doctors and teachers, children cannot by themselves meet all the needs of society”, stressed the young woman.
According to the UN, “more than a million girls”, mainly between 12 and 18 years old, have not been able to go to school in the last year. “This is a tragic, shameful and totally avoidable anniversary,” Markus Potzel, acting head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Manua), said in a statement on Sunday.
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“The continued exclusion of girls from secondary school has no credible justification or equivalent anywhere in the world. It is profoundly damaging to a generation of girls and to the future of Afghanistan,” he added.
Exploitation risk
“The rejection of education violates the most fundamental rights of girls and women. It increases the risk of marginalization, violence, exploitation and abuse,” the Manua statement insists.
“It is the responsibility of the Taliban to create the conditions for peace, inclusion, security, human rights and economic recovery. The international community remains ready to support a government that is representative of the population as a whole and that respects their rights,” he concludes.
Last month, the authorities announced the introduction of supplementary compulsory courses devoted to religion in public universities.
The Minister of Education, quoted by local media, also stated that secondary schools had been closed for girls because “many rural people did not want adolescent girls to go to school”.
Parents and families across Afghanistan are eager to educate their daughters, stressed a teacher interviewed by AFP on Sunday. “They want their daughters to achieve their goals. Every family wants their children, including girls, to serve the nation,” insisted the educator, who did not want to give her name for fear of reprisals.
Since returning to power, the Taliban have placed severe restrictions on girls and women to conform to their ultra-rigorist vision of Islam, thus removing them from public life.
AFP
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