Zakiya Ahmad, a mountaineer from the country who recently succeeded in climbing Mount Everest, has launched a campaign to support the right to education for women and girls in Afghanistan.
She has called on people to join the campaign and support the rights of Afghan women and girls, particularly their right to education and learning.
This initiative comes as the Taliban’s restrictions on girls’ education continue, leaving millions of girls unable to attend school or university.
At the same time, a number of Afghan human rights activists and citizens in Germany held a protest gathering, demanding that schools and universities be reopened to girls. The demonstrators chanted slogans such as “No to the Taliban” and “Bread, Work, Freedom,” urging the international community not to remain silent about the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan.
Hasni Faqiri, a human rights activist, said at the gathering: “We ask the United Nations, the international community, and human rights organizations to be the voice of Afghan women and to support the women and children of Afghanistan.”
Saleha Ainu, one of the participants in the protest, said: “We are raising our voices on behalf of Afghan women who are deprived of all their rights. Neither the Taliban, nor their supporters, nor those who sympathize with them should ignore the voices of women.”
Meanwhile, Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, criticized what she described as the “silence and indifference” of the international community toward the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan. She emphasized that world leaders must not remain silent in the face of widespread violations of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Nahid, one of the students deprived of education, said: “Since the Taliban came to power, I have been very upset. They closed the schools, shut the doors of the universities, and we lost hope.”
After returning to power in 2021, the Taliban banned education for girls above the sixth grade and later closed universities to women as well.
Despite repeated calls from the United Nations, human rights organizations, and various countries to lift these restrictions, the Taliban have so far made no changes to their policies.
This comes as Din Mohammad, the head of the Taliban’s Council of Religious Scholars in Kabul, recently declared women’s and girls’ education to be “absolutely forbidden,” stating that women only need to learn certain religious sciences. His remarks have drawn widespread criticism from human rights activists and a number of religious scholars.
Writer:Salima Aryaei
