At least 1.4 million girls in Afghanistan have been denied access to secondary education since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the United Nations’ cultural agency said Thursday.
UNESCO said in a statement access to primary education has also fallen sharply, with 1.1 million fewer girls and boys attending school.
UNESCO is alarmed by the harmful consequences of this increasingly massive drop-out rate, which could lead to a rise in child labor and early marriage,” the agency said.
The UN agency said, There are now nearly 2.5 million girls deprived of their right to education, representing 80 percent of Afghan school-age girls,
The Taliban administration, which is not recognized by any other country, has imposed restrictions on women that the UN has described as “gender apartheid.”
Afghanistan is the only country in the world to stop girls and women from attending secondary schools and universities.
This represents an increase of 300,000 since the previous count carried out by the UN agency in April 2023.
The number of primary pupils has also fallen. Afghanistan had only 5.7 million girls and boys in primary school in 2022, compared with 6.8 million in 2019, UNESCO said.
The UN agency blamed the drop on the authorities’ decision to ban female teachers from teaching boys and the lack of incentive for parents to send children to school.
Enrolment in higher education is equally concerning, the statement added that the number of university students had decreased by 53 percent since 2021.
