The Taliban have left 2.4 million girls without secondary education in Afghanistan since their return to power in 2021, according to the United Nations. This figure represents an increase of 200,000 compared to 2025 and over one million more than in 2024. The restrictions imposed by the Taliban have deprived girls of access to a fundamental human right and reversed two decades of progress in women's education, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warned this week. UNESCO has described the situation as a gender apartheid. According to UNESCO’s report titled The Right to Education: What Is At Stake in Afghanistan? A Balance of 20 Years, published in 2021, the years before the Taliban's return were marked by an increase in girls' presence in classrooms. In 2001, girls represented less than one in ten primary school students; by 2018, they made up four in ten. International intervention after 2001 also led to higher female literacy rates. However, today Afghanistan is the only country in the world that formally prohibits girls from accessing education beyond primary school. Since 2022, more than 100,000 women have had to leave university as well. Hoda Jaberian, coordinator of UNESCO’s Emergency Education Programme, stated during a virtual press conference that Afghanistan is currently facing three simultaneous crises: access to education, gender equality, and learning outcomes. She has led several field missions to assess the situation of women in the country. These measures are part of a broader effort to exclude 22 million women from public life. After August 15, 2021, the Taliban excluded women from most paid jobs and public employment, required them to travel with a male guardian, and even prohibited them from speaking or showing their faces in public. Some women have resisted through the creation of underground schools, secret reading clubs, and educational television programs broadcast from abroad. However, some have faced severe consequences for defending the right to learn. Amal and Ariana, mother and daughter, live as fugitives after authorities discovered the classroom they set up in the basement of their home to teach mathematics, history, English, and Dari. “My mother always says that silence means accepting injustice,” Ariana told El País in a report published Monday. UNESCO has repeatedly warned that if the ban continues, nearly four million girls will be outside the secondary education system by 2030. The decline is alarming in a country already facing educational and gender gaps. In 2019, 93 percent of children of primary school age could not read a simple text, and by 2022, the literacy rate in Afghanistan was 37.3 percent, particularly low among women, only 22.6 percent could read compared to 52.1 percent of men. Projections from UNESCO indicate that if nothing changes, the country will face a shortage of more than 11,000 qualified female teachers by 2030. This, as Jaberian warns, will become a problem once the education system begins to recover. It creates a vicious cycle: fewer girls can study, fewer women can become teachers or qualified professionals, and gradually, the system loses its human capital. For many Afghan women, daily life under Taliban rule has become increasingly restricted. Soobabeh, a 23-year-old woman, describes her existence as confined to her home due to fear of going out. She wakes up, gets ready, reads, takes online courses, writes poems, and her world is limited to the walls of her room. “The person I was before August 15, 2021, no longer exists. I was alive, and now it's almost as if I had died.” Others, like Zahra, a young woman who initially did not identify as an activist, found herself drawn into protests against the Taliban's policies. On September 4, 2021, she was detained by Taliban intelligence agents, placed in a black bag, taken to a detention center, and held there for three days. According to Maria Lopez, a lawyer from Netwomening, an organization assisting Afghan women seeking international protection in Spain, Zahra endured torture during her detention. Legal efforts to secure asylum for Afghan women have been challenging. Many face long waits, impossible documentation requirements, and legal battles. Alessia Schiavon, a lawyer working with RAGAA, an initiative by the Foundation International Baltasar Garzón and the association People Help, describes Afghanistan as a dystopian tale where women are being erased from society. She emphasizes the need to recognize the gender apartheid as an international crime and work toward effective legal tools to protect human rights.
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