Overview
- UNESCO reported on Tuesday that about 2.4 million Afghan girls are currently excluded from secondary school, an increase of roughly 200,000 from 2025.
- The report notes that the Taliban closed girls' secondary schools in March 2022 and barred women from universities in December 2022, measures that were called temporary but have remained in force.
- UNESCO projects that if the bans continue nearly 4 million girls could be denied secondary education by 2030 and that Afghanistan could face a shortfall of more than 11,000 qualified female teachers by that year.
- The agency estimates the long-term economic cost at about $9.6 billion in lost income through 2066 and warns that up to 600,000 women could be pushed out of the labour force by then.
- UNESCO renewed its call for the immediate, unconditional restoration of girls' and women's access to secondary and higher education and highlighted the wider crisis in Afghanistan, where over half of primary-age children are out of school and literacy among ten-year-olds is below 10 percent.