Shared Report – the following report is a shared report that Bolaq does not own.
Introduction
When the Taliban seized power in August 2021, the Taliban’s first action was to prohibit the education of girls above the sixth grade, closing the doors of schools to them. Following this, over the past three years, the Taliban systematically and intentionally restricted the education of women and girls in universities and their participation in private educational centers, such as language and computer courses. In the most recent development, the Taliban also banned the education of women and girls in para-medical and nursing institutes. Currently, girls in Afghanistan are only allowed to attend primary schools, from grades one to six. Even in these primary schools, the Taliban policy have made changes with negative consequences, rendering the educational services both quantitatively and qualitatively inadequate and harmful, thus unhelpful for the students. Therefore, it can be said that women in Afghanistan are currently completely deprived of their right to quality education, which is one of their fundamental human rights.
The Afghanistan Human Rights Center, through the preparation of this report, analyzes and evaluates the extent of Afghan women’s access to the right to quality education and the systematic, widespread and targeted violation of this human right by the Taliban. It has gathered accurate and reliable information from various sources on this issue. This report serves as a documentation of the widespread and planned violation of the right to education by the Taliban and as a credible source for advocacy and the pursuit of justice for both the present and future of Afghanistan.
In the first section of this report, the gradual deprivation of women’s right to education at various educational levels is documented, along with the chronological account of the Taliban’s oppressive actions. A brief analysis of the situation, based on international human rights documents, is also provided. In the next section of the report, the consequences of depriving women of their right to education are examined. The findings of this report indicate that the ban on women and girls’ education has led to negative and damaging consequences for the women and girls themselves and for society as a whole, some of which seem irreversible. For example, the deprivation of education has led to an unprecedented and unparalleled increase in forced and underage marriages, the spread of depression and mental health issues among young women and girls, and an increase in suicide cases and attempts by victims.
The next section of the report assesses the extent of violations of global standards for quality education, which are guaranteed in international human rights documents. This section first describes the standards for quality education, then presents and analyzes the information gathered, which indicates violations of these standards. Important issues such as the evaluation of the curriculum and the harmful changes made by the Taliban, as well as the unprecedented expansion of the Taliban’s religious-jihadi schools in Afghanistan, are included in this section.
In the next section of this report, online education for women and girls in Afghanistan is assessed. After the suspension of in-person classes in schools, universities, and other educational centers, a large number of online educational institutions were established and began operations. This section examines the extent of access for female students to virtual education, the problems and challenges they face in this area, and the demands of the beneficiaries. It also outlines potential solutions that could increase access to these opportunities.
In the final part of the report, a summary of the contents is presented, along with a set of recommendations from the Afghanistan Human Rights Center to relevant national and international authorities. These recommendations are, in fact, the demands of the victims and the solutions proposed by the interviewees, which have been categorized and highlighted by the Afghanistan Human Rights Center. It is important to note that the information in this report covers the period from August 2021 to December 2024.