Education is a human right accepted by all states regardless of their political
structure, race, religion, and state of their economy. Observing human rights,
particularly the education rights of children and women, is not optional. States can
not opt out of them under any circumstances, particularly using a religion whose
genesis starts by requiring its followers to read and continue to educate themselves
from birth to death. Not a single Muslim-majority country except the Taliban has
used state apparatus to ban education for girls and close university doors on women.
The Taliban have denied education for girls beyond sixth grade and closed the
university doors on women holding their education and human rights as hostages
under the guise of sudo-religion to pressure the international community to
recognize their government.
Even access to education for young girls is threatened by their wider gender
apartheid policies. Girls in fourth to sixth grade, in the Ghanzi province, must cover
their faces to and from school or face expulsion. Having agreed with the significance
of education as a right for all, and embedded it in the foundational conventions of
the UN, the international community now has an obligation to condemn the Taliban
strategy of depriving women of education and removing them from all aspects of
public life. Such a policy condemns a nation, for generations, to a cycle of poverty
and suffering. The International community must call and take action for the full,
equal, and meaningful incorporation of girls and women of Afghanistan in
educational processes and remove all obstacles to their equal participation in the
nation’s public life.

The international community must exert real pressure on them to drop these policies
by:
● Removing the privileges such as travelling internationally;
● Removing and limiting their sources of financial support;
● Establishing relations with the democratic forces of Afghanistan, particularly
women’s groups inside and outside of the countries;
● Inviting Muslim majority-states to publicly and strongly condemn the
Taliban’s treatment of women;
● Inviting prominent religious leaders and Islamic civil society organizations
using prominent platforms to denounce the Taliban misusing religion for their
political goals;
● The UN, UNESCO, and the wider international community must publically
iterate that the use of religion to limit human rights for women and girls is
considered an insidious form of war against women and must be stopped.

Women Living Under Muslim Laws
24 Jan 2023