In the five years since the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan, 2.4 million girls have been quietly erased from the country's classrooms — a loss that UNESCO now names as the only formal ban on girls' secondary and higher education anywhere on earth. What took two decades to build was undone in a season, and what was once a generation's rising possibility has become, for many, an entire secondary school cycle spent in silence. The world has appealed, and the door has not moved.
UN: 2.4M Afghan girls barred from secondary school five years into Taliban rule
2.4 million Afghan girls denied access to secondary education, losing five years of schooling in what constitutes an entire secondary school cycle and reversing decades of educational progress.