UN calls Afghan girls' exclusion from high schools "shameful"

Islamabad: On Sunday, the United Nations demanded that the Taliban government in Afghanistan allow females in grades 7 through 12 to attend classes again, calling the anniversary of their exclusion from high school "shameful."

The U.N. expressed growing concern that the policy, along with other limitations on fundamental freedoms, will cause the country's economic crisis to worsen by increasing insecurity, poverty, and isolation.

"This is a tragic, shameful, and entirely avoidable anniversary," said Markus Potzel, acting head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

Hard-liners seem to be in control of the Taliban-led administration in Afghanistan one year after they seized power. Teenage girls are still not allowed to attend school, and when in public, ladies must cover everything but their eyes. The religious group has broken several commitments to make it possible for females to return to school. Girls between the ages of 12 and 18 who are in grades 7–12 are the main victims of the ban, the Associated Press reported.

The Taliban ordered girls to stay at home while reopening high schools to boys. The United Nations estimates that over a million girls had been prevented from enrolling in high school in the previous year.

"The ongoing exclusion of girls from high school has no credible justification and has no parallel anywhere in the world. It is profoundly damaging to a generation of girls and to the future of Afghanistan itself," said Potzel, who is also the U.N. secretary-general's deputy special representative for Afghanistan.

50 girls wrote "A Year of Darkness: A Letter from Afghan Girls to Heads of Muslim Countries and Other World Leaders" as a commemorative letter on Sunday. The girls belong to the northern Parwan province, the eastern Nangarhar province, and Kabul, the nation's capital.

"The past year, we have been denied human rights, such as the right to attain an education, the privilege to work, the liberty to live with dignity, freedom, mobility and speech, and the right to determine and decide for ourselves," Azadi, an 18-year-old 11th-grade student from Kabul, said in the letter. Only the first names of the girls were written in the letters.

The U.N. said that denying girls and women access to school violates their most fundamental human rights. According to the international organisation, it contributes to a wider range of discriminatory policies and practices that target women and girls since the de facto authorities came to power in the summer of 2021, increasing the risk of marginalisation, violence, exploitation, and abuse against girls.

The United Nations once more urged the Taliban to drop the numerous limitations they have put in place that prevent Afghan women and girls from exercising their fundamental freedoms.

The Taliban have had trouble running the country since gaining control, and they continue to enjoy isolation outside. As the flow of foreign aid has reduced to a trickle, an economic crisis has pushed millions more Afghans into poverty and starvation.