UN envoy Markus Potzel calls for Afghan girls' senior secondary education
Jul 17, 2022
Kabul [Afghanistan], July 17 : UN deputy special envoy for Afghanistan Markus Potzel emphasised the need for Afghan girls' senior secondary education and said that the same rights to education should be provided to everyone.
The remarks came during Potzel's visit to Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, TOLO News reported.
"Girls should go to school and even above grade six and should enjoy the same educational opportunities as boys," Potzel said.
Potzel also mentioned the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund of USD 100 million to alleviate economic challenges, local media reported.
The UN envoy added that there were challenges in the health and education and commercial sectors.
"I am aware that many of these problems have existed before the take over of the Taliban," he said.
Afghan officials said that they hope the challenges that were discussed with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) official are addressed.
"The envoy of the UN visited here and pledged to help us in addressing the problems particularly in unfreezing the Afghan assets," Nangarhar's information and culture directorate head Qari Noor Mohammad Hanif said.
The Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021 and imposed policies severely restricting basic rights--particularly those of women and girls. They dismissed all women from leadership posts in the civil service and prohibited girls in most provinces from attending secondary school. According to HRW, Taliban decrees prohibit women from travelling unless accompanied by a male relative and require women's faces to be covered in public--including women TV newscasters.
The Taliban have carried out broad censorship, limiting critical reporting, and have detained and beaten journalists. Taliban forces have carried out revenge killings and enforced disappearances of former government officials and security force personnel.
On September 18, 2021, a month after taking over the country, the Taliban ordered the reopening of boys' secondary schools but made no mention of girls' secondary schools. This was interpreted as a ban on girls' secondary education. In several provinces, under community pressure, Taliban officials allowed girls' secondary schools to reopen, but the vast majority of these schools remained closed.
On March 21, 2022, the Taliban pledged to reopen all schools on March 23, but on that date, they closed girls' secondary schools again. An indefinite ban remains in place with no clarity about when or if these schools will reopen. Yalda Hakim, a BBC news presenter who participated in the project, has been counting down on Twitter the days since the ban began. The ban was implemented over 300 days ago.
