The UN condemns the exclusion of Afghan girls from school

• The UN calls on the Taliban rulers to reopen schools to girls in classes seven to 12.
• Ban targets female students of classes 7-12, primarily affecting girls aged 12 to 18.
• More than one million girls have been barred from attending high school over the past year.

The United Nations has urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to reopen schools for girls in grades seven through twelve, calling the anniversary of their exclusion from high school “shameful.”

The UN said on Sunday that it is increasingly concerned that the policy, along with other restrictions on basic freedoms, will contribute to the country’s economic crisis by increasing insecurity, poverty, and isolation.

“This is a tragic, shameful, and entirely avoidable anniversary,” said Markus Potzel, acting head of the UN mission in Afghanistan.

A year after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, teenage girls are still barred from attending school, and women are required to cover themselves from head to toe in public.

“A year of lost knowledge and opportunity that they will never get back,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted on Sunday. “Girls belong in school.” “The Taliban must allow them to return.”

The Taliban has failed to deliver on various promises to allow girls to return to school.

The ban applies to female students in grades seven through twelve, primarily affecting girls aged 12 to 18. The Taliban reopened high schools for boys while instructing girls to stay at home.

Over the last year, the UN estimates that over one million girls have been barred from attending high school.

“The continued exclusion of girls from high school has no credible justification and has no parallel anywhere in the world.” It is extremely harmful to a generation of girls as well as Afghanistan’s future,” Potzel said.

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