KABUL: The United Nations called on the Taliban to allow females to attend high schools once again on Sunday, calling the ban that started exactly a year ago “tragic and disgraceful.”
Hardline Islamists reopened high schools for boys on September 18, 2021, weeks after the Taliban took over in August of last year, but they forbade secondary schoolgirls from attending lessons.
On March 23, months later, secondary schools for girls were finally opened by the education ministry. However, within hours, the Taliban leadership issued another order to cancel classes.
Since then, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said that more than a million teenage girls nationwide had been denied access to education.
Markus Potzel, the acting head of UNAMA, issued a statement that read, “This is a tragic, shameful, and utterly avoidable anniversary.”
The Taliban promised a gentler version of its strict Islamist dictatorship that controlled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 after taking control on August 15 of last year after a chaotic withdrawal of international soldiers.
However, after a few days, they started putting tight limitations on girls and women in order to conform to their severe interpretation of Islam, essentially pushing them out of public life.
In addition to banning girls’ high schools, the Taliban also forbade women from holding various government positions and forced them to cover themselves in public, preferably with a full-body burqa.
Due to pressure from families and tribal elders, some high schools for girls have remained open in regions far from the Kabul and Kandahar central power strongholds.
