A group of women protested outside two schools in Kabul on Saturday, October 29. They started their march at around 9 a.m. in Police Districts 4 and 9 of Kabul city, demanding the reopening of schools for girls above the sixth grade. They demonstrated in front of Queen Soraya High School and marched on Al-Fath High School, which the Taliban prevented them from entering.
The women protesters chanted the slogan “Lesson without fear,” in videos of their marches that were shared with Zan Times. That is the slogan that has quickly gone viral after being launched a few days ago by Farhad Darya, a famous singer of the country. In the videos of Saturday’s demonstrations, protesting women say that the “closure of girls’ schools is a clear violation of human rights, and banning girls’ education is violence.”
“We, the parents of the girls, have gathered here with a number of students to decide the fate of our daughters,” says one protester, who wanted to go into Al-Fath High School. “Due to the Taliban’s restrictions on girls’ education, my four daughters are deprived of education. My two daughters are in grades 11 and 12 and they wanted to take the university entrance exam, but this year, unfortunately, they missed school,” says one of the women in the march.
These women asked the international community to put pressure on the Taliban to open schools for girls. On the anniversary of the closure of school for girls above grade 6, the Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) published a statement, calling for the immediate reopening of girls’ schools, stating that “the ongoing exclusion of girls from high school has no credible justification and has no parallel anywhere in the world.”
Although the Taliban claimed last year that they would reopen girls’ schools after establishing an Islamic framework and even announced plans to open schools in March. But they backtracked on their decision and postponed the reopening of girls’ schools until “further notice.”
More recently, the minister of education of the Taliban claimed that the decision to keep schools closed was made in accordance with the culture of the Afghan people, but his words were met with strong opposition from the people, who launched yet a campaign in support of girls’ education.
