Afghanistan, the only country in the world to ban education for girls over 12

The situation is unique in the world. Three years after the Taliban returned to power Afghan authorities have restricted girls’ access to education, to the extent that they drop out of high school and university education. According to UNESCO figures published this Thursday, 2.5 million young girls are currently out of school, which represents 80% of the female population of school age.

Since the capture of Kabul in mid-August 2021, the fall has been painful: 1.4 million Afghan women have been excluded from secondary education, and higher education enrollments have fallen by 53%. Although primary schools are still open to girls, the number of school children has marked a clear decline: from 6.8 million in 2019, it fell to 5.7 million, a drop of 16% in five years.

Time bomb

Mélissa Cornet, an expert on gender issues in Afghanistan, describes a real “time bomb”. According to the latest UNESCO estimates, the cost of dropping girls out of school in Afghanistan amounts to $1.5 billion a year, or 8.32% of Afghan GDP. Abration, for a State whose wealth output has been cut by a quarter from 2020.

The lack of training for women increases the lack of nurses and doctors, in a country that already had, in 2021, only 4.6 health professionals per 10,000 inhabitants, well below the critical shortage level set by the Health Organization the World explains (23 professionals per 10,000 inhabitants). ). Restrictions on access to education also lead to a shortage of female teachers. By 2030, according to UNESCO, there will be a shortage of more than 11,000 teachers. Enough to trigger a vicious circle, making primary education even more fragile.

Lost ideas

However, after the fall of the first Taliban regime in 2001, women’s access to education had improved significantly in two decades: 83% of primary school-age girls were in school, more than half of them continued in secondary education and almost a third of them. he went on to university.

Returning to power, the Taliban seemed at first to show a white hand. “The first year, we still wanted to believe that it would be different from the 1990s,” says Mélissa Cornet. This strange honeymoon lasted about a year. » From March 2022, the Taliban announced that colleges and high schools for girls, which closed since the fall of the previous government, would not reopen . In December of the same year, students found the door closed at the university .

Other methods

Many actors nevertheless try to ensure continuity in girls’ education. “The main difference compared to the 1990s is that a whole generation of women has been educated,” recalls Mélissa Cornet. In this context, there are a large number of hidden schools, impossible to identify in detail, has succeeded throughout the country.

“Of course most of them are not that secret,” says the expert. The community knows. Sometimes, even Taliban leaders are aware and turn a blind eye. Some officials are against the decisions made by the central government, because they are in favor of girls’ education, while respecting Sharia law. »

Dina*, who holds two degrees in law and English literature, created an unofficial school a few months after the Taliban came to power to allow about fifty women to take literacy courses. “The lessons take place at home, with my family,” she explains. Since then, she has come to study in France, leaving her family to continue this mission. “Before I left, I was teaching English, and my sister, who studied medicine, was giving mathematics lessons,” she says.

Since it has become very difficult for women to leave their homes, the audio-visual media has become extremely important, in a country where 80% of the population watches television every day. Hamida Aman, director of the NGO Begum Organization for Women, founded Begum TV in 2023, a television channel that broadcasts from Paris, during the day, school programs, but also psychological support programs. A way, for millions of Afghan women at home, to stay connected to education and the outside world.

* The first name has been changed