Introduction

Currently, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls are banned from access to secondary and higher education. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has stated that in three years since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, more than 1.4 million eligible girls have been deliberately prevented from attending school.

This report analyzes the impact of the Taliban’s return to power on Afghan women’s right to education, as well as the most significant developments in the country’s education system since August 2021, including limitations regarding access, curriculum and alternatives sought by families to formal education. The report aims to shed light on the legal and human rights dimensions of the Taliban’s discriminatory policies and actions that deliberately deprive women of their right to education. The report also sheds light on Taliban’s efforts to steer the educational system in an ideological direction that may have long-term impact on the Afghan society as a whole and particularly on the status of women’s and girls’ rights. The report includes information and analysis on the Taliban’s gradual, systematic, and targeted steps to strip women and girls of their right to education; the intensification of restrictions in educational institutions following the enactment of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (PVPV) law, also known as “Morality Law”, the changes made to school and university curricula; inspections of school and university libraries and selective purging of books and a brief section on the status of access to education for girls and women with disability.

Methodology

A team of data providers gathered information and data for this report in 26 provinces of Afghanistan. The team conducted in person and phone interviews with women and girl deprived of the right to education, women and girls who were victims of domestic violence, journalists, civil society activists, human rights defenders, healthcare providers, school and university teachers, students, lawyers, and staff from relevant international organizations. The data collection and interviews were conducted with the guidance of Rawadari’s core research and documentation team. To ensure the validity and reliability of the information obtained from the local sources, the researchers compared and verified the findings against decisions, decrees, orders, and other written documents issued by the Taliban regarding education as well reporting by other human rights and media organizations.  To ensure the safety of interviewees and sources, dates and specific details about the locations of certain incidents have been intentionally withheld from the report.

Additionally, the report is informed by literature review of existing documents and research on education in Afghanistan. The research and documentation team consulted previous reports by Rawadari, as well as reports and research published by human rights organizations and media outlets on the status of women’s education in Afghanistan since 15 August 2021. Additionally, pre-Taliban laws and reports from the Ministry of Education of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and relevant international organizations were reviewed to better contextualize the changes made by the Taliban.

Limitations

Access to information in Afghanistan has become increasingly difficult due to the strict restrictions imposed by the Taliban. They prevent the dissemination of any information that relates to human rights violations by creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. The General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), the departments of the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MPVPV), the Directorate of Information and Culture, and the offices of provincial governors all play roles in enforcing restrictions on access to information. Collecting information on the human rights situation of women and girls is particularly challenging due to the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s movement and the erasure of women from public spaces.

Since the announcement of the PVPV law or ‘Morality Law’ there is increased fear and compliance with the Taliban’s repressive restrictions. For example, interviewees have told Rawadari that the Taliban will punish journalists, media outlets and citizens who attempt to record and broadcast the voice of a woman or girl. Prior to this, in several provinces, the Taliban had threatened local media and journalists, warning that if they publish information on the situation of Afghan women, their media outlets will be shut down, and they will be imprisoned. According to the interviewees, the Taliban even monitor phone calls and social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram to ensure that incidents of human rights violations are neither recorded nor shared. Consequently, Rawadari has faced serious restrictions while gathering information for this report, including challenges in interviewing women in various parts of the country and obtaining details on the curricula of religious schools/madrasas run by the Taliban.