UN mourns ban on Afghan girls’ education on international girl child day

Islamabad — 

The United Nations expressed "a large woody of sorrow" Friday implicit the continued prohibition connected girls’ secondary schoolhouse acquisition successful Taliban-led Afghanistan arsenic the satellite assemblage marked the International Day of the Girl Child.

Roza Otunbayeva, the caput of the U.N. Assistance Mission successful Afghanistan, renewed her entreaty to Taliban leaders to "change course" by lifting the restrictions. She lamented that implicit 1,100 days person passed since the de facto Afghan authorities imposed the prohibition connected educating girls implicit the property of 12.

“This is much than 3 years of mislaid accidental – not conscionable for millions of girls, but for families, communities, and the full country,” Otunbayeva stated.

”As each time passes, adjacent greater harm is being done to the lives of women and girls. Afghanistan is being taken backwards, not forwards, successful its quest for peace, recovery, and prosperity,” the U.N. envoy added.

Otunbayeva pledged that her enactment volition proceed to advocator for Afghan women and girls, adjacent successful the look of attempts to soundlessness them.

The Taliban person enforced their strict mentation of Islamic instrumentality since regaining power of the impoverished state successful 2021.

Girls ages 12 and older are barred from attending school, making Afghanistan the lone state with that restriction. Female students person been prohibited from attending universities, and astir Afghan women are banned from moving successful some nationalist and backstage sectors, including the U.N. They are besides forbidden from visiting nationalist places specified arsenic parks and gyms.

Islamist leaders enacted contentious “vice and virtue” laws past month, which solidified existing restrictions connected women’s freedoms and deemed the dependable of a female’s dependable successful nationalist arsenic a motivation violation.

The decree requires women to screen their full bodies and faces erstwhile outdoors and forbids them from looking astatine men to whom they are not related and vice versa, sparking a planetary outcry and calls for reversing the curbs.

The Taliban government, which is officially not recognized by immoderate country, defends its policies arsenic being aligned with Sharia and Afghan customs, rejecting planetary disapproval arsenic an interference successful the interior affairs of the country.

The United Nations recognizes October 11 arsenic the International Day of the Girl Child to admit girls' rights and the challenges they look worldwide.