The oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan is at risk of being forgotten, activists fear. At a donor conference, they demanded that the international community do more to fund school programs for children in need. “Otherwise the girls will soon be forgotten,” said Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and child rights activist from Pakistan, in a video message. “Just talking and doing nothing is not enough,” said 20-year-old Somaya Faruqi, captain of the Afghan women’s robotics team, in Geneva on Thursday.
Faruqi was able to leave Afghanistan after the Islamist Taliban took power in the summer of 2021. The Taliban are increasingly excluding girls and women from social life. They are no longer allowed to attend secondary schools and are no longer allowed to register for university entrance exams.
“We can’t see the stars anymore”
“Put yourself in the shoes of the girls and women: how would you feel?” asked Fawzia Koofi, former Deputy Speaker of Parliament in Kabul. She fled abroad after attempts were made on her life. “Women tell me: The sky has collapsed over us. We can no longer see the stars.” What the Taliban enforced in Afghanistan has nothing to do with culture or religion, Islam, but violates both.
“The Taliban deny girls education because they want a persistently misogynist society. Modesting girls’ wings doesn’t allow them to reach their potential,” said Malala’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai, director of the Malala Foundation and teacher. It is wrong to withhold aid money. “You’re punishing people for the Taliban’s mistakes,” he said.
Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Education, has called for more money for underground schools, online learning programs, scholarships and pressure on Muslim-majority countries to use their influence with the Taliban to demand girls’ human right to education. The UN Education Cannot Wait fund plans $1.5 billion in emergency education by 2026.
