24 Lakh Afghan Girls Remain Shut Out of Secondary School Under Taliban Rule

An estimated 2.4 million Afghan girls remain excluded from secondary education five years after the Taliban seized power, UNESCO said on Tuesday, renewing its demand for the immediate restoration of education rights for girls and women. The UN agency described the continued restrictions as a serious violation of fundamental rights and noted that Afghanistan remains the only country where girls and women are formally barred from secondary and higher education.

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, as US and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. The authorities subsequently prevented girls from attending secondary schools and later extended restrictions to higher education, employment and other areas of public life. Despite repeated appeals from the United Nations, humanitarian organisations, human-rights groups and several Islamic countries, the restrictions have remained in place.

Hoda Jaberian, UNESCO’s programme coordinator for education in emergencies, said five years represented almost an entire secondary-school cycle for a child and therefore could not be treated as a temporary interruption. She reiterated UNESCO’s call for the restrictions to be lifted without conditions, maintaining that education for girls and women is a fundamental right and cannot be replaced by alternative arrangements.

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The restrictions have also reversed significant progress made in Afghanistan over the previous two decades, according to UNESCO. In 2001, access to education for Afghan girls was severely limited, but by 2021 nearly one million girls were enrolled in secondary education. UNESCO maintains that much of this progress has since been lost, leaving a generation of girls without access to formal secondary schooling and limiting their educational opportunities.

UNESCO has continued supporting education through community-based programmes, literacy initiatives and skills-development courses despite the restrictions. The programmes operate in community spaces, including the homes of literacy facilitators, with the knowledge of authorities, according to the agency. More than 1,000 literacy facilitators are involved, with most having received training from UNESCO and its partners.

The UN agency has maintained that Afghan learners should not be abandoned while restrictions remain in place. Its community-based programmes are intended to preserve alternative pathways to learning and provide educational opportunities where formal schooling is unavailable. UNESCO has urged the restoration of girls’ and women’s access to secondary and higher education, warning that continued exclusion risks further reversing Afghanistan’s educational gains and limiting opportunities for an entire generation.

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