KABUL — The
UN urged the Taliban on Sunday
to reopen high schools for girls across Afghanistan, condemning the ban that
began exactly a year ago as “tragic and shameful”.
اضافة اعلان
Weeks after the Taliban seized power in August last
year, the hardline Islamists reopened high schools for boys on September 18,
2021, but banned secondary schoolgirls from attending classes.
Months later on March 23, the education ministry
opened secondary schools for girls, but within hours the Taliban leadership
ordered classes to be shut again.
Since then more than a million teenage girls have
been deprived of education across the country, the
UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.
“This is a tragic, shameful, and entirely avoidable
anniversary,” said Markus Potzel, the acting head of UNAMA in a statement.
“It is profoundly damaging to a generation of girls
and to the future of Afghanistan itself,” he said, adding the ban had no
parallel in the world.
UN chief Antonio Guterres urged the Taliban to
revoke the ban.
“A year of lost knowledge and opportunity that they
will never get back,” Guterres said on Twitter.
Several Taliban
officials say the ban is only temporary, but they have also wheeled out a
litany of excuses for the closures — from a lack of funds to time needed to
remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.
Earlier this month, the education minister was
quoted by local media as saying it was a cultural issue, as many rural people
did not want their daughters to attend school.
After seizing power on August 15 last year amid a
chaotic withdrawal of foreign forces, the Taliban promised a softer version of
their harsh Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.
But within days they began imposing severe
restrictions on girls and women to comply with their austere vision of Islam —
effectively squeezing them out of public life.
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