Kabul, Afghanistan – The United Nations Children’s Fund-UNICEF warns that more than 2.2 million Afghan girls will be excluded from education beyond grade 6 by the end of 2025, marking four years since the Taliban’s ban on secondary schooling for females took effect in December 2021. This ongoing restriction, enforced across Afghanistan by the de facto authorities, stems from their interpretation of Islamic law, depriving girls of learning opportunities and exacerbating humanitarian challenges. The disclosure, made on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, underscores a deepening crisis amid global calls for reversal.
Why it Matters
The plight of Afghan girls and their exclusion from school reverberates across South Asia, a region where gender disparities in education already strain development efforts in neighbouring Pakistan and beyond. This ban not only perpetuates cycles of poverty and early marriage but also hampers regional stability by limiting Afghanistan’s human capital, potentially increasing migration pressures and cross-border aid dependencies. For South Asia, where women comprise half the population, such regressions threaten shared goals of equitable growth and resilience against climate and economic shocks.
UNICEF Warns Mounting Toll on Afghan Girls, School Access
UNICEF’s stark assessment reveals that the ban, now in its fourth year, has systematically barred Afghan girls from secondary education, with the number of affected adolescents rising annually. According to UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, “It has been four years since adolescent girls in Afghanistan were barred from attending school beyond grade 6. By the end of 2025, more than 2.2 million adolescent girls will have been excluded from education.” This figure includes an additional 400,000 girls impacted in the past year alone, as cross-verified by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
The restriction, imposed shortly after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, confines girls to primary-level schooling or home, halting their academic progression. In provinces like Helmand and Badakhshan, enforcement varies, but nationwide, it has led to empty benches in secondary classrooms. UNICEF spokesperson Daniel Timme noted the broader implications, stating that the denial affects not just individual futures but Afghanistan’s health and economy, with professions like teaching and nursing at risk of female shortages.
Economic analyses amplify the urgency. A report by Education Cannot Wait, citing UNESCO data, projects a $1.5 billion loss to Afghanistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) if the ban persists until 2030. This aligns with UNICEF’s earlier findings from 2023, estimating that depriving girls of secondary education has already cost the economy at least $500 million in the preceding 12 months, based on lost workforce participation. If the current cohort of 3 million girls could complete secondary schooling and enter the job market, they could contribute $5.4 billion to the economy, per World Bank-influenced models referenced by UNICEF.
Voices from the Ground: Afghan Girls Plead for School Reopening
Amid the data, personal testimonies underscore the human cost. Hadiya, a would-be university student, expressed despair: “This is very concerning for me because, year after year, we are losing our youth, wasting our lives, and falling behind in our studies.” Similarly, Maqboola, a primary school pupil, urged, “The problem is that school doors are closed. Please, we kindly ask you to open these doors for us.” Women’s rights activist Tafsir Siyahposh echoed these sentiments, declaring, “Our demand as women from the Islamic Emirate is to pay attention and reopen the school gates—this situation is irreversible.”
These calls resonate with UNICEF’s advocacy, which emphasises education’s role in safeguarding girls from early marriage, malnutrition, and mental health issues. Recent household surveys by UNICEF indicate that higher education levels correlate with delayed childbearing and improved child survival rates. Yet, the ban has correlated with a 45 per cent rise in early childbearing projections by 2026 and up to a 50 per cent increase in maternal mortality, according to UN Women analyses cross-referenced by UNICEF.
The de facto authorities maintain that girls’ education beyond grade 6 is a domestic matter aligned with Sharia principles, rejecting international interference. Despite sporadic underground initiatives—such as community-based learning supported by UNICEF reaching 445,000 children, 64 per cent of whom are girls—these efforts fall short of systemic access.
Background
Afghanistan’s educational landscape has been transformed dramatically post-2001, with girls’ primary enrolment surging from nearly zero to over 80 per cent by 2021, and female literacy doubling to nearly 30 per cent. However, the Taliban’s 2021 takeover reversed these gains, instituting the secondary ban on December 21, 2021, after initial promises of inclusion. By March 2022, the policy had solidified, extending to universities in December 2022. UNESCO reports that, including pre-2021 out-of-school rates, 80 per cent of school-age girls—totaling 2.5 million—are now denied education. This regression, unique globally, compounds a humanitarian crisis where nearly 10 million children rely on aid, per Education Cannot Wait data.
UNICEF and partners have sustained limited programmes, but the scale of exclusion persists. The 1,000-day milestone in June 2024 highlighted 3 billion lost learning hours, equivalent to a generation’s setback.
What’s Next for Afghan Girl’s School Rights
As international forums like the United Nations General Assembly convene, pressure mounts on the Taliban to rescind the ban, with UNICEF urging immediate action to reintegrate Afghan girls into classrooms at all levels. Sustained global advocacy, coupled with targeted support for alternative learning, could mitigate losses, but without policy reversal, the exclusion of Afghan girls from school risks entrenching inequality for decades.
Published in SouthAsianDesk, September 19th, 2025
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