Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to school beyond the primary level. This distinction sets it apart from every other nation on Earth, including those with challenging human rights records. The Taliban’s discriminatory ban is depriving at least 1.4 million girls of their right to education. Think about that number for a moment – that’s more than the population of many entire cities, all denied the fundamental right to learn.
The ban isn’t limited to just secondary education. Girls are banned from secondary school and women are barred from universities, most jobs, and public spaces such as parks, gyms, and sports clubs. Even more shocking, by 2025 Taliban government cancelled 18 education courses from Universities out of which six were women’s studies related, that included ‘sexual harassment and human rights’, midwifery courses, and Gender and Development.
Afghanistan Stands Alone The Taliban’s Twisted Justification
The Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, issued this order, which was announced at a meeting of the Taliban Ministry of Public Health on Monday. However, recently something unprecedented happened. A senior Taliban figure has urged the group’s leader to scrap education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying there is no excuse for them, in a rare public rebuke of government policy, with Sher Abbas Stanikzai making remarks that there was no reason to deny education to women and girls.
The Taliban de facto authorities have no justification to deny the right to education, on any grounds, including religion or tradition. Even within their own ranks, voices of reason emerge. The latest comments marked his first call for a change in policy and a direct appeal to Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, with an analyst noting this goes further in publicly calling for a change in policy and questioning the legitimacy of the current approach.
The Devastating Impact on Girls and Families
When Afghan girls walk out of the school gates on the last day of grade six, their formal education is over, as since September 2021, the Taliban has banned girls from secondary school. The psychological toll is immense. This has taken a psychological and emotional toll on Afghan girls, extinguishing their hopes. One sixteen-year-old girl named Atefa captured the desperation perfectly when she said, “For Afghan girls, the earth is unbearable, and the sky is unreachable”.
The crisis extends far beyond education itself. The ban leads to an increase in early marriages, heightens gender inequality, with a 2017 study finding that 28% of Afghan girls were married before turning 18, while by August 2023, research revealed that 70% were aware of girls being forced into marriage before adulthood. Rates of early, forced and child marriage remain high and are rising, with nearly 30 per cent of Afghan girls under 18 married in 2023, including 10 per cent under the age of 15.
The Health Crisis Deepens
UNICEF has reported Afghanistan having one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates with 638 mothers dying for every 100,000 births, exacerbated by acute shortages of qualified birth attendants in the country. The situation becomes even more dire when we consider the long-term implications. In 2023, it was reported that more than 90% of healthcare facilities were at risk of closure, leading to an estimated 4.8 million unattended pregnancies and 51,000 maternal deaths between 2021 and 2026.
A December 2024 ban by the DFA blocked women from studying medicine or midwifery, closing one of the last pathways for them to become healthcare providers. The ban is set to prevent more than 36,000 midwives and 2,800 female nurses from joining the country’s health sector in the foreseeable future. This creates a vicious cycle where women need female healthcare providers but can’t be trained to provide that care.
Economic Devastation Beyond Imagination
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the annual economic cost of banning women from employment in Afghanistan is estimated at USD1 billion (5% of GDP). To put this in perspective, that’s roughly equivalent to losing the entire economic output of a major province every single year. Curbing women’s access to work results in a 21% drop in their employment levels by mid-2022, and a steep reduction in GDP of up to $1 billion, or 5% of the Afghan GDP.
The Broader Restrictions Creating a Prison State
Education represents just one piece of a much larger puzzle of oppression. Since regaining control of the country on August 15, 2021, the Taliban have imposed rules that systematically violate the rights of women and girls in most aspects of their lives, including not only the right to education but also to freedom of movement and speech, to work, and to live free from violence. Women and girls can’t even go to a gym or walk in a park.
In February 2023, The Guardian reported that the Taliban began to restrict access to contraceptives, ordering pharmacies to clear their stocks of birth control medicine and threatening midwives, with Taliban fighters stating that “contraceptive use and family planning is a western agenda”. The restrictions have become so comprehensive that restrictions on movement can make daily life dangerous for women and girls, as in many parts of the country, women must be accompanied by a male relative when they leave their homes, leaving widows or women without close male relatives to risk their safety simply to buy food or access healthcare.
International Criminal Court Takes Action
The world is finally responding with concrete legal action. The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has announced seeking arrest warrants against the Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and the Chief Judge, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, for committing crimes against humanity with their campaign of oppression and persecution of Afghan women and girls. The announcement by International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan stated that his team “will be announcing applications for arrest warrants in the Afghanistan situation very soon”.
ICC member states are obliged to arrest the wanted if they are on their territory. However, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the warrants, saying that the Taliban does not recognize the ICC as an entity. This defiance shows how deeply entrenched their discriminatory policies have become.
Afghanistan’s ban on women’s education represents something far more sinister than educational policy. It’s a systematic dismantling of half the population’s fundamental human rights, creating ripple effects that will devastate the country for generations. The economic costs alone are staggering, but the human cost – millions of dreams crushed, potential wasted, and lives destroyed – cannot be calculated in dollars. What strikes me most is how this affects not just individual girls and women, but the entire future of Afghanistan as a nation. How can any country hope to thrive when it deliberately wastes half its human potential?