On 15 August 2021, the Taliban seized Kabul, regaining control of the country for the first time in 20 years. Over the past year, 19.4 million women and girls, have had their basic rights, such as education, taken away.
Secondary schools have been closed since the Taliban takeover leaving 3 million girls out of school. Women have been ordered to cover their faces in public and have been barred from working in most jobs.
The threat of gender-based violence is ever present for women and girls.
Yet women are determined to take back the freedoms they have lost – even at great risk. Amnesty International reports that women who have fought for their rights have been “harassed, threatened, arrested, forcibly disappeared, arbitrarily detained and tortured”.
Pastana Durrani is one of those women. Durrani is an Afghan human rights activist and teacher. She founded LEARN Afghanistan four years ago with a vision of making education available to girls in Afghanistan without access to school. After the Taliban takeover, Durrani was forced to close nearly all LEARN’s programs and continue its activities underground. After speaking out against the closure of schools and universities, Pashtana went into hiding before escaping to the United States in November 2021. She now runs LEARN remotely from Massachusetts.
LEARN’s courses cover graphic design, chemistry, biophysics, coding and website development and are available in Dari and Pashto languages.
LEARN student Fatemeh, 15 (not her real name) spoke to the Malala Fund’s publication, Assembly, about what it has been like since the Taliban takeover.
“I am going to the course fearing that I might be harassed and abused on the way. One day the Taliban came to the institute where we secretly take classes and threatened us, saying that they will imprison the family of whoever opposes their restrictions. What could be worse than threatening a girl with her family?”
Another student, Gulnoor, said: “I am a girl who was born and raised in the era of democracy; education and freedom have a special meaning to me. Then the Taliban came and took those two basic rights from us. I am stuck in a great despair and see only a dark future ahead. I request all the women’s rights activists and all those who believe in human values to fight for us. Don’t leave us alone in these difficult days.”
More information
assembly.malala.org/stories/one-year-of-the-talibans-ban-on-girls-education
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