The agency announced on Thursday that it is spending International Education Day on January 24, for the women and girls of the country.
“There is no country in the world that prohibits women and girls from going to school. Education is a universal human right that must be respected” speak General Manager Audrey Azoulay.
“The international community has a responsibility to ensure that rights of girls and women in Afghanistan restored immediately. The war against women must end,” she added.
Fear of a ‘lost generation’
Last month, the in fact The Taliban government in Afghanistan forbids young women from going to university.
This follows an earlier directive banning girls from secondary school, enacted just months after the fundamentalist group who ruled in the late 1990s until 2001, regained their rights. force in August 2021, returning to the capital, Kabul.
As a result, Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prohibits access to education for women and girls.
“The country is in danger of losing a generation because educated women are essential to the development of the country,” UNESCO speak earlier this week.
“Afghanistan – or any other country – can’t go forward if half its population is not allowed to pursue an education and participate in public life.”
Girls attend a class at a UNICEF-funded school in Helmand province, Afghanistan. (file)
Gain and lost
Between 2001 and 2018, Afghanistan recorded one tenfold increase by enrollment at all levels of education, from about one million to 10 million students, according to UNESCO.
The number of girls attending primary school increased from almost zero to 2.5 million. By August 2021, they make up 4 out of 10 primary school students.
The presence of women in higher education also increased nearly 20-fold: from 5,000 students in 2001 to more than 100,000 two decades later.
Today, 80% of Afghan girls and school-age women, or 2.5 million people, are out of school. The order to suspend higher education for women, announced in December, affects more than 100,000 students studying at government and private institutions.
A basic right
UNESCO calls for immediate and non-negotiable access to education and back to school for all girls and young women in Afghanistan.
“Everyone has the right to education. Everyone. But in Afghanistan, girls and women have been deprived of this basic right,” the agency said.
Over the past two decades, UNESCO has supported the Afghan education system, including running a literacy program for more than 600,000 young people and adults, 60% of whom are women.
Since the Taliban takeover, it has shifted operations to ensure continuity of education through community-based literacy and skills development classes for more than 25,000 youth and adults in 20 provinces.
An advocacy campaign has reached more than 20 million Afghans to raise public awareness of the right to education for young people and adults, especially girls and women.
UNESCO is also working on an initiative to ensure education data is reliable so partners can directly fund the needs that matter most.
