December 26, 2023
Under Taliban rule, Afghan girls are banned from education above the sixth grade. The policy extended in 2022 to ban women from universities.
Teen girls at Kabul’s Bibi Razia School in Afghanistan finished the school year in tears on Dec. 11, sadly aware that under Taliban rule, sixth grade marks the end of education for females. The policy comes amid the Taliban’s regain of control in Afghanistan in 2021, following two decades of U.S. military presence.
According to PBS, many policies regarding women and girls were reversed, which brought about the December 2021 ban on education for females above the sixth grade. Under the rule of the Islamic fundamentalist group, the policy also expanded the ban to bar women from universities in December 2022.
Thirteen-year-old Bahara Rustam attended her last day of classes at Bibi Razia, but there was no graduation ceremony to celebrate the sixth-grade girls’ final day at the school.
“Graduating (from sixth grade) means we are going to seventh grade,” she said. “But all of our classmates cried, and we were very disappointed,” the teen said.
Similarly, 13-year-old Setayesh Sahibzada was saddened by uncertainty about her future.
“I wanted to be a teacher,” Setayesh said. “But now I can’t study, I can’t go to school.” Now, the young girl wonders how she will ever stand on her “own two feet” without access to education.
U.N. envoy Roza Otunbayeva says that an entire generation of Afghan girls risk falling irrevocably behind with each passing day under the Taliban prohibition. Analyst Muhammad Saleem Paigir warns that Afghanistan faces disaster if women and girls remain excluded from education, stating, “We understand that illiterate people can never be free and prosperous.” However, the Taliban seem unmoved and continue their severe restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms.
While the Taliban now claim that girls of all ages may attend all-female madrassas focused on religious education, Otunbayeva questions whether these schools actually provide girls with standardized, modern curriculum subjects.
As previously covered by BLACK ENTERPRISE, Afghan broadcaster Tolo News aired an all-female panel on March 8 to discuss the position of women in Islam. The broadcast marked a rare event after Taliban bans forced many female journalists to flee the profession or move off-air.
