1.4M Afghan girls barred from schools since Taliban takeover: UNESCO

Access to primary education has also significantly declined, with 1.1 million fewer children, both girls and boys, attending school. This statement came as the Taliban authorities marked the third anniversary of their takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021.
"UNESCO is alarmed by the harmful consequences of this increasingly massive drop-out rate, which could lead to a rise in child labor and early marriage," the agency stated. "In just three years, the de facto authorities have almost wiped out two decades of steady progress for education in Afghanistan, jeopardizing the future of an entire generation."
Currently, nearly 2.5 million Afghan girls are deprived of their right to education, representing 80 percent of school-age girls in the country, according to the UN agency. The Taliban administration, unrecognized by any other country, has imposed restrictions on women that the UN has described as "gender apartheid." Afghanistan remains the only nation in the world to bar girls and women from attending secondary schools and universities.
"Due to bans imposed by the de facto authorities, at least 1.4 million girls have been deliberately denied access to secondary education since 2021," UNESCO noted, an increase of 300,000 since the UN agency's previous count in April 2023.
UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay called on the international community to remain mobilized "to secure the unconditional reopening of schools and universities for Afghan girls and women."
The number of primary school students has also decreased, with Afghanistan having only 5.7 million children in primary school in 2022, compared to 6.8 million in 2019. UNESCO attributed this decline to the authorities' decision to ban female teachers from teaching boys and the lack of incentive for parents to send their children to school.
Higher education enrollment is equally concerning, with the number of university students decreasing by 53 percent since 2021. "As a result, the country will rapidly face a shortage of graduates trained for the most highly-skilled jobs, which will only exacerbate development problems," UNESCO warned.