FIVE years after the Taliban returned to Kabul, the world is still issuing statements while a generation of Afghan girls is being erased from classrooms and public life. Unesco now says 2.4m girls have been denied secondary education, 200,000 more than last year. The number could rise to 4m by 2030. Afghanistan remains the only country where girls and women are barred from secondary and higher education. The cruelty extends to universities, many jobs, parks, gyms and public life. It is a systematic attempt to make half a population invisible. Yet the response from the UN, powerful capitals and institutions built to defend human rights has become a ritual of condemnation without consequence. Resolutions, reports and expressions of ‘deep concern’ cannot educate a child. If these bodies possess moral authority, this is where it must be exercised.
The West, above all the US, cannot pretend Afghanistan is somebody else’s problem. Washington led a war there for 20 years, spent blood and treasure ‘remaking’ the Afghan state, and repeatedly invoked the rights of Afghan women as evidence of progress before exiting in August 2021 as that state collapsed and the Taliban swept back into power. Whatever the arguments for ending an endless war, departure did not erase responsibility for those left behind. Nor should the passage of time normalise Taliban repression. The US, EU, UN Security Council, Muslim-majority states and Afghanistan’s neighbours should coordinate pressure. They must deny diplomatic legitimacy, preserve targeted sanctions, condition concessions on measurable restoration of women’s rights, expand scholarships and remote-learning pathways, fund Afghan women-led organisations and protect humanitarian aid from political bargaining. Countries with influence over the Taliban must actually use it. Afghan girls were encouraged for two decades to believe that classrooms, careers and public life belonged to them. The world cannot now watch those doors being bolted shut and call its helplessness diplomacy.
Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2026
