In the five years since the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan, 2.4 million girls have been barred from secondary school — a prohibition without precedent anywhere else on Earth. UNESCO marked this grim anniversary on Tuesday, naming it not merely a policy failure but a fundamental violation of human rights, one that has erased two decades of hard-won educational progress in a single sweep. The silence of classrooms that once held nearly a million girls speaks to something older and more persistent than politics: the recurring human impulse to limit who is permitted to know, and therefore who is pe
2.4M Afghan girls remain barred from secondary school 5 years into Taliban rule
2.4 million girls have lost access to secondary education, reversing educational gains and effectively excluding women from public life and economic participation.