ISLAMABAD (AP/Al Jazeera) – The Taliban appointed a new education minister for Afghanistan, days after the United Nations called on the country’s new rulers to reopen schools for girls beyond sixth grade.
Since seizing power in Afghanistan just over a year ago, the Taliban have restricted the rights of girls to education, despite initial promises to the contrary. The United Nations estimates that more than a million girls have been barred from attending most of middle school and high school over the past year.
The appointment, which came late on Tuesday and was announced by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujaihid, named Habibullah Agha, the current head of Kandahar Provincial Council, as the new education minister, replacing Noorullah Munir. The first Taliban-appointed education minister was Hemat Akhundzada, who was in the post until last September.
No information was available on Agha.
A year since the Taliban took over the country as the Western-backed government and military crumbled, the UN has said it was increasingly concerned that Taliban restrictions on girls’ education, as well as other measures curtailing basic freedoms, would deepen Afghanistan’s economic crisis and lead to greater insecurity, poverty, and isolation.
“This is a tragic, shameful, and entirely avoidable anniversary,” said Markus Potzel, acting head of the UN mission in Afghanistan.
The Taliban say they are working on a plan to open secondary schools for girls but have not given a timeframe. Still, hard-liners appear to hold sway in the Taliban-run government and women are required to cover themselves from head to toe in public, with only their eyes showing.
While still education minister, Munir was quoted as saying on a recent trip to southern Uruzgan province that people in rural areas do not want to send their daughters to school, describing it as a “cultural issue.”
After pleading with world leaders at the United Nations to protect the education and rights of women in Afghanistan a year after the Taliban took over, Somaya Faruqi, the former captain of the Afghan girls’ robotics team, broke down in tears backstage.
“I was in classroom last year, but this year girls are not in classroom. Classrooms are empty, and they are at their homes. So it was too hard to control myself, control my feelings,” Faruqi, aged 20, told the Reuters news agency.
Faruqi, who now attends the Missouri University of Science and Technology, left Afghanistan in August last year.
Speaking at the UN in New York this week as world leaders gather for the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly, she urged them to unite and demand the reopening of girls’ schools and the protection of their rights.
“This week, you are all here to propose solutions to transform education to all, but you must not forget those who are left behind, those who are not lucky enough to be at school at all,” said Faruqi. “Show your solidarity with me and millions of Afghan girls.”