Pakistan said on Saturday that Afghan Taliban government Did not participate in the World Summit on Girls’ Education in the Muslim World held in Islamabad.
“We invited Afghanistan but no one from the Afghan government was involved in the conference,” Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told news agency AFP.
“Nevertheless, representatives of various organizations dedicated to girls Education in Afghanistan will attend the event,” he said.
A United Nations agency said last year that the Taliban had deliberately deprived 1.4 million Afghan girls of going to school through sanctions. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where secondary and higher education for women is banned.
The Taliban, who took power in 2021, banned girls’ education above the sixth grade because they said it did not conform to Sharia, or their interpretation of Islamic law. They have not stopped it for boys and have shown no sign of taking the steps needed to reopen classrooms and campuses for girls and women.
UNESCO said at least 1.4 million girls have been deliberately denied access to secondary education since taking office, an increase of 300,000 since its last count in April 2023, with more girls each year. reaches the age limit of 12 years.
The UN agency warned that authorities had “virtually reversed” two decades of steady progress for education in Afghanistan. “The future of an entire generation is now at stake,” he added. It said Afghanistan had 5.7 million girls and boys in primary school in 2022, compared to 6.8 million in 2019.
Unesco said the decline in enrollment was a result of the Taliban’s decision to prevent female teachers from teaching boys, but could also be explained by a lack of motivation among parents to send their children to school in an increasingly tight economic environment. is
Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai also participated in the event organized by Pakistan. Malala was nearly killed by militants as a schoolgirl.
Yousafzai was kicked out of the country in 2012 after being shot by the Pakistani Taliban, who were angered by her activism, and has returned to the country only a few times since then.