Afghanistan’s Taliban Denial of Women’s Education: A Violation of International Human Rights Law

Abstract

The Taliban’s return in Afghanistan has created a big humanitarian mess, especially when it comes to basic human rights like the right to education. This paper takes a look at how the Taliban is crushing educational rights and puts it in the bigger picture of the Afghan conflict, looking at how it affects Afghans and the world from a human rights perspective. Since they took back control in 2021, the Taliban has put in place some really harsh school policies, hitting women and girls the hardest. They've banned secondary and higher education for females, kicked women out of teaching jobs, and rolled out strict and ideologically driven school curriculums. All this really limits academic freedom and makes it hard to think critically. These decisions not only break Afghanistan’s promises under international human rights agreements, like the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but they also keep poverty going, worsen gender inequality, and create more chaos in society. This paper points out that we really need a united global push to hold the Taliban responsible and protect education for all Afghans. The educated individual's exclusion from the educational gap in Afghanistan posits new ways to act informed by the support of unregulated education programs and upon the more traditional levers of diplomacy, economics and law. Ultimately, the education gap in Afghanistan is not just a local issue, it is a global problem that is a barrier to human dignity, peace and development everywhere.