Shafaqna English- Four years after the Taliban’s return to power, Afghan girls remain widely barred from formal education, with online classes—often conducted amid power outages—serving as a limited form of resistance.
Four years after the Taliban regained power in August 2021, the exclusion of Afghan girls from in-person education has evolved from a temporary measure into a systematic structure. According to international organizations, more than 1.4 million high school girls and female university students have been deprived of access to formal education.
The ban, which escalated in December 2022 with the closure of universities to women, had already targeted girls’ secondary schools in 2021—making Afghanistan the only country in the world to officially and broadly prohibit girls’ education.
According to UNESCO statistics (February 2026), only 17 percent of Afghan girls of high-school age are able to continue their studies, a figure that drops to below 5 percent in rural areas.
Taliban decision-makers justify the policy by citing “compliance with Islamic principles” and a “lack of infrastructure for gender segregation.” However, officials within the Taliban’s education ministries have informally acknowledged that internal divisions between moderate and hardline factions have delayed the reopening of girls’ schools.
In this context, Afghanistan’s Council of Ulema issued a statement in Dalwa 1404 (early 2026), declaring that “girls’ education up to grade twelve is permissible under Sharia,” though the endorsed ruling has yet to translate into operational policy.
Source: Shafaqna Persian