Afghanistan: Protest against expulsion of girls from school

The Taliban have withdrawn their promises to allow girls to go to secondary school. Now several women and girls in Kabul have taken to the streets for freedom of education and for schools to be opened up.

Dozens of women and girls have taken to the streets in Afghanistan to protest against the exclusion of girls from secondary schools. The TV station Tolo News reported on dozens of participants in the demonstration in the capital Kabul. “Open the schools!” and “Justice!” shouted the women and girls gathered in a square in the capital Kabul, according to the AFP news agency. “Education is our fundamental right, not a political project” was written on the protest poster of a demonstrator, it said. The protest broke up as Taliban fighters approached the rally, according to AFP.

With the start of the new school year last week, the radical Islamic Taliban announced that schools would also be open to girls, but then announced at short notice that they would indefinitely postpone access to classes for girls from the 7th grade. Girls faced closed doors on the first day of school or had to leave school immediately after classes had started.

Criticism from the UN and the EU

The UN, the EU and numerous organizations and countries have sharply criticized the decision. The United Nations Security Council called on the Islamic Emirate to enable all girls in Afghanistan to go to school. On Friday (local time), ten representatives of the Security Council again addressed the Taliban. In a joint statement distributed on Twitter, they called for the schools to be opened immediately to all girls in Afghanistan. “Education is the crucial building block for every society,” they emphasized.

Women’s right to education is one of the main conditions of the international community for aid to the unrecognized Taliban government. When the Islamists took power in August last year, they officially closed all schools because of the corona pandemic. Two months later, only boys and a few younger girls were allowed to resume classes.