UNESCO says 2.4 million Afghan girls still barred from school after Taliban rule

Ankara,UPDATED: Aug 11, 2026 22:54 IST

An estimated 2.4 million Afghan girls remain excluded from secondary education five years after the Taliban took over the country, UNESCO said on Tuesday, renewing its call for the immediate restoration of their right to education.

The Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation said the continued exclusion of women and girls from education amounted to a grave violation of their fundamental rights. It said Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are formally banned from secondary and higher education.

"Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are formally banned from secondary and higher education," Hoda Jaberian, UNESCO's programme coordinator for education in emergencies, said at a news conference by video. "Five years is not a temporary interruption in a child's education. It is clearly almost an entire secondary school cycle." She added, "UNESCO continues to call for the immediate and unconditional restoration of girls and women's right to secondary and higher education. It is not negotiable. It's a basic human right, and we reiterate that there is no substitute for this."

The Taliban seized power on August 15, 2021, as US and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan after two decades of war. Shortly afterwards, it barred girls from secondary schools and later extended the restrictions to higher education, employment and other sectors, effectively excluding women and girls from public life. The Taliban has kept the ban in place despite appeals from the United Nations, humanitarian groups, human rights advocates and several Islamic countries, saying the issue is a domestic matter.

Jaberian said the restrictions were undoing two decades of progress Afghanistan had made in education. While access to schooling for girls was severely limited in 2001, nearly 1 million girls were enrolled in secondary education by 2021. "Afghanistan had made really major progress in expanding girls' access to education," Jaberian said. "But unfortunately, much of that progress now has been completely reversed."

UNESCO said it has been supporting education in Afghanistan through community-based education, literacy and skills development programmes. The skills development and literacy classes are held in community spaces, often inside the homes of literacy facilitators, with the knowledge of the authorities. The agency said there were more than 1,000 literacy facilitators, most of them trained by UNESCO and its partners. "While the restriction remains, we cannot abandon Afghan learners," Jaberian said. "UNESCO work with communities and our partners from the communities to preserve every possible pathway to learning."

UNESCO's latest appeal underlines that millions of Afghan girls remain out of secondary education, that gains made over two decades have been reversed, and that the agency is continuing community-level efforts while calling for the immediate and unconditional restoration of girls' and women's right to study.

With PTI Inputs

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