Afghan girls’ education: UN condemns ‘shameful’ year-long ban

KABUL: The United Nations urged the Taliban on Sunday to reopen high schools for girls across Afghanistan, condemning the ban that began exactly a year ago as “tragic and shameful”.

Weeks after the hardline Islamists seized power in August last year, they reopened high schools for boys on September 18 but banned secondary schoolgirls from attending classes.

Months later on March 23, the education ministry opened secondary schools for girls, but within hours the Taliban leadership ordered them shut again.

Since then, more than a million teenage girls have been deprived of education across the country, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.

“This is a tragic, shameful, and entirely avoidable anniversary,” Markus Potzel, the acting head of UNAMA, said in a statement.