Now Reading: Taliban bar 2.4 million Afghan girls from school: UNESCO
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Taliban bar 2.4 million Afghan girls from school: UNESCO
The Taliban have barred an estimated 2.4 million Afghan girls from secondary education since they returned to power in 2021, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said on Tuesday. Afghanistan is the only…
The Story in Brief
The Taliban have barred an estimated 2.4 million Afghan girls from secondary education since they returned to power in 2021, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said on Tuesday. Afghanistan is the only country where girls and women are formally banned from secondary and higher education, UNESCO added, warning the policy risks 'condemning Afghanistan to decades of lost potential, deepening poverty, and irreversible harm.'
UNESCO estimates the ban could cause 600,000 women to leave the workforce by 2066, lead to $9.6 billion in cumulative income losses and increase early marriage risks. The ban also worsens a shortage of female teachers, with UNESCO projecting a deficit of over 11,000 qualified female teachers by 2030. The Taliban-run education ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The Indian Opinion
Five years on, the Taliban's promise that women could study is broken. Narratives that their rule brings stability ignore that formal bans on female education, unique in the world, are bleeding Afghanistan of teachers, literacy and economic potential. UNESCO's numbers are stark: 90% of 10-year-olds cannot read. The concrete test is whether any nation expanding ties with the Taliban extracts even a partial rollback of these bans, or merely accepts the status quo.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
