KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education exacerbates the ongoing humanitarian crisis and has serious ramifications for Afghanistan’s economy and development trajectory.
in a statement marking the 1000 days of the Taliban ban on girls’ education beyond secondary schools, Catherine Russell, UNICEF executive director emphasized that the rights of children, especially girls, cannot be held “hostage to politics.”
“1,000 days out-of-school amounts to 3 billion learning hours lost,” she said.
“For 1.5 million girls, this systematic exclusion is not only a blatant violation of their right to education, but also results in dwindling opportunities and deteriorating mental health.”
“Education doesn’t just provide opportunities. It protects girls from early marriage, malnutrition and other health problems, and bolsters their resilience to disasters like the floods, drought, and earthquakes that frequently plague Afghanistan,” she added.
UNICEF called upon the Taliban authorities to immediately allow all children to resume learning and called on the international community to remain engaged and support Afghan girls, who are in need of help more than ever.
“No country can move forward when half its population is left behind,” part of the UNICEF statement reads.
Today marks the 1,000th day since the Taliban implemented a ban on girls’ education beyond the sixth grade, affecting 1.5 million girls who were excluded from schooling. Subsequently, the ban was extended to universities, preventing female students from attending both private and state institutions.
Additionally, under Taliban rule, women and girls are prohibited from working in most sectors, operating businesses, visiting parks or gyms, or traveling long distances without a male guardian, among other restrictions.
Despite considerable pressure from the UN, human rights organizations, aid providers, and Islamic countries, the Taliban has refused to lift the ban, accusing these entities of interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.
Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has emphasized in his report, to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week, the necessity for the Taliban to be held accountable for their crimes against women and girls.
In his report, Mr. Bennett describes the Taliban’s discriminatory system as a crime against humanity, saying it “constituted in and of itself a widespread and systematic attack on the entire civilian population of Afghanistan.”
In line with the demand from Afghan activists and women’s rights defenders, the UN senior official calls for the recognition and codification of “gender apartheid” as a crime under international law.
He advocated for initiating a case against the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the International Court of Justice for violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, and other relevant instruments to which the country is a signatory.
