Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Girls’ education under Taliban rule from 1996-2001
3. Progress in the last 20 years
4. Barriers to educating girls in Afghanistan
4.1 Lack of female teachers
4.2 Insecurity and conflict
5. The current status of girls’ education
6. Conclusion
By Shrutti Satish Rajgarhia
1. Introduction
The 2030 Sustainable Development Goal Agenda (UNESCO, 2015) is a momentous step towards achieving global sustainability. Target 4.7 of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) introduces education for sustainable development (ESD) which aims to “build a more just and sustainable world ... with greater emphasis on the contribution of learning content to the survival and prosperity of humanity” (UNESCO, 2019).
However, currently in Afghanistan ESD is not a priority. The continued periods of war have “taken a heavy toll on Afghanistan’s developmental and educational progress” (Kavazanjian, 2009, p. 40). Even though the last 20 years has seen valuable progress in girls’ education, the recent Taliban takeover has put everything in flux.
If sustainable development is going to happen, it “is going to be a learning process” (Vare & Scott, 2007, p.192). Afghanistan is going to have to learn and adapt as she rebuilds and recovers. Additionally, ESD for 2030 suggests it is essential to take into consideration people’s distinctive circumstances and equip them with the most relevant skills essential for survival. Most importantly ESD should safeguard their “human dignity and the right to live decently” (UNESCO, 2019, Annex 1, p.2). Access to education is the first step to ensure human dignity and every girl in Afghanistan has the right to this dignity.
As of 2020, 48.68% of Afghanistan’s population was female and if she and the world want to successfully achieve the SDGs and thus integrate ESD, this 48.68 % needs to be included germanely (World Bank, 2021). Educating girls transforms not only their lives but also the lives of their families and communities (Levine, 2006; Kavazanjian, 2009).
This entry aims to highlight that if the world wants to achieve the SDGs by 2030, women and girls in Afghanistan cannot be left behind. It examines the non-existence of education for girls in 1996, and recounts the progress made post the Taliban rule in 1996. It reviews two significant barriers that exist in educating girls in Afghanistan and further spotlights the current situation of girls’ education with the return of the Taliban government in 2021. ESD corresponds to quality education for a sustainable world, but this entry aims to take a different approach to ESD, highlighting that in conflict-affected areas like Afghanistan, the first step to ESD is recognizing that access to education is the first step to upholding the integrity and dignity of humankind, especially girls.
It must be noted that this entry has one main limitation, which is that, with the recent Taliban take-over in August 2021, there is limited and continuously changing information on the Taliban government’s next steps and future policies.
2. Girls’ education under Taliban rule from 1996-2001
Before the many civil wars and the Taliban rule in 1996, 50% of students and 60% of teachers in schools were women (Ayoub, 2000; Alvi-Aziz, 2003). But when the Taliban took over, they declared the country be ruled by Shari’ah law, which forbade girls from attending schools (Roshan, 2004) and from working outside the home (Alvi-Aziz, 2008). During this time, Afghanistan endured “the most repressive gender regime in the Muslim world” (Deo, 2014, p.1).
The Taliban strongly believed girls’ education was an infringement of Islamic teachings, which they further used as a reason to shut down many girls’ schools and even decollated female teachers (Levine, 2006). The civil wars and violence in the 1980s and 1990s had already caused disarray in Afghanistan’s education system (Barr, 2017) and this chaos exacerbated when the Taliban banned female teachers in schools.
Women were coerced into wearing a burqa (Roshan, 2004), which owing to their poor economic conditions, they shared with other women of their household (Telesetsky, 1998). They were also required to be chaperoned “by a muharam (a male relative)” (Oxfam, 2011, p. 7) every time they left home (Oxfam, 2011), further curtailing their freedom, and deliberately being excluded from participating in public life.
3. Progress in the last 20 years
When the United States military ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, hope for a brighter future was born (Tripathi, 2003). There has been remarkable progress since 2001 in stabilizing the education system in Afghanistan. Millions of girls, who had not seen the inside of a classroom, attended school post-2001 (Barr, 2017; Jones, 2008). Primary school attendance rates increased, from no girls attending primary school in 2001 to 2.5 million attending in 2018, and the female literacy rate increased markedly from 17% in 2011 to 30% in 2018 (UNESCO, 2021). Remarkable progress was also made in the appointment of female teachers with a significant increase from 17% in 2007 to 36% in 2018 (UNESCO, 2021). The 17% of female teachers in school in 2007 further indicated the progress made from the 9.72% in 2001.
The tremendous progress in the last 20 years has been significantly due to the change in the attitudes of the Afghan people towards women and girls. “A woman is best at home or in the grave”, a phrase often propagated by the Taliban (Saigol, 2002, p.7) was not accepted by the Afghan citizens in a research project conducted in 2016 - 2017 with 1500 Afghan participants (Firchow & Urwin, 2020). The participants in this project viewed women’s active participation in employment and girls’ education as a driver and indicator of peace and stability (Firchow & Urwin, 2020). Additionally, Asia Foundation’s 2018 survey demonstrated that 84% of Afghan citizens supported women’s education and 70% supported women working outside the home (Akseer et al., 2018).
4. Barriers to educating girls in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, significant progress has been made in educating girls in the last two decades. However, as of 2018 there were 3.7 million Afghan children out-of-school, 60% being girls (Education, 2018). There are two significant barriers which continue to exist preventing girls in Afghanistan from getting educated.
4.1 Lack of female teachers
In 1999, 9.72% of teachers in Afghanistan were female, but the number increased significantly to 36.05% in 2018 (CEICdata, 2020), showing prioritization of girls’ education. The presence of female teachers in the classroom encourages parents to send their girls to school thus positively impacting girls’ enrolment and furthering retention. The female teachers in schools have resulted in the better performance of girls in schools, enabling higher scores in tests (World Bank, 2014). But now with the Taliban restricting women’s employment, girls’ education will be impacted.
In September 2021, the Taliban permitted the return of male students and teachers (A.N.I, 2021) and banned girls over the age of 12 to attend schools (UNDP, 2021). 10-15% of the female teachers in Afghanistan who are qualified are leaving the country, fearing for their life since the Taliban takeover (Batha, 2021), and causing a brain-drain of talent in Afghanistan. With the lack of female teachers, girls are unlikely to see the inside of a classroom and the exclusion of women from the workforce is likely to further impact the economic and social development in Afghanistan. Education and employment are intertwined and with restrictions imposed on both girls and women, this vicious cycle will prove to further slow the achievement of the SDGs and will continue to deprioritize ESD in Afghanistan. The world cannot aim to successfully achieve the SDGs when girls in Afghanistan are deprived of their human right to education.
4.2 Insecurity and conflict
“The security issue is still the biggest issue in Afghanistan” (Kennedy, 2006, p. 10). Educating girls is not only a driver of political and economic development but is also important to create stability and peace (Powell, 2014). Conflict impacts girls, boys, women, and men differently. Girls are two and half times more likely to not be in school and 90% of adolescent girls are likely to be out of secondary school in conflict-affected countries (Pereznieto et al., 2017). Strengthening the position of women in communities reduces the rates of conflict and violence (Heather, 2013). But involvement of women in the peace processes over the years has been significantly low. A review conducted by UNWOMEN in 2012 revealed that between 1992 and 2011 only nine percent of negotiators and four percent signatories were women (Pereznieto et al., 2017)
Violence has had detrimental effects on the education system of Afghanistan. In 2012, anti-government forces set fire to an all-girls school in the Wazir village of the Nangarhar province, causing destruction of the school infrastructure (World Bank, 2014). In 2018, another attack in the Farah province left 3500 girls out of school with no hope to return (UNICEF & UNGEI, 2019). Attacks on schools not only result in casualties but are a directed effort by combatants, preventing children from attending schools, especially girls.
5. The current status of girls’ education
Since the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan from 15th August 2021, they have asked women and girls to stay away from work and schools, citing safety issues (BBC NEWS, September 2021). These measures have severely restricted the lives of women and girls and are raising questions about the Taliban’s commitment to empowerment women and girls. For example, a female director of a girl’s school in Kabul is unable to attend the "Taliban committee meetings on education” (Blue & Zucchino, 2021) because only men can attend them. The exclusion of women in education and employment is making the achievement of SDGs and the introduction of ESD in Afghanistan a distant dream.
Boxing women and girls out of the developmental process has not only social but also alarming economic ramifications. If girls do not get an education and if women are kept out of the workforce, Afghanistan is going to witness an economic loss between US$600 million and US$1 billion, which accounts for 3-5 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP in the years to come (UNDP, 2021). Which, if compared to UNDP’s estimate in 2020, is a great loss as the country requires US$300 million to achieve the SDGs (UNDP, 2021). With a loss in budget due to the exclusion of girls and women, achieving the SDGs, and thus promoting ESD seems impossible.
6. Conclusion
Women and girls are half of the world’s population and, if they are excluded from getting an education, achieving an equitable and sustainable world is impossible. In 2021, when the Taliban took over, girls were asked to stay at home, making Afghanistan the only country to restrict half of her population from getting educated (BBC, November 2021).
The progress made in the last 20 years in educating girls has been impressive. But if the Taliban decide to exclude women and girls from participating in the restructuring and rebuilding of Afghanistan, it will annihilate the progress made so far, taking Afghanistan back to 1996. Without education, employment is impossible and if there are no women role models, there is no hope for young girls.
“The cost of not investing in education for girls far exceeds the cost of investing” (Pereznieto et al., 2017, p. 4). Girls’ education has multi-fold positive effects from economic growth to reducing child marriage, to better health for girls and their families and a huge step towards a more sustainable world.
One of the aims of ESD is to ask questions, think critically and make more informed and sustainable decisions. Afghanistan has a new government, which as history shows excludes women and girls confining them to stereotypical gender roles of cooking and cleaning. Quality education is important but in Afghanistan right now, mere access to education for girls is in flux.
Education is a fundamental human right and every individual irrespective of their gender has the right to learn in a classroom. Target 4.7 of SDG 4 and ESD insists that every individual’s human dignity needs to be honored. So, the first step towards achieving the SDGs and eventually ESD in Afghanistan is to prioritize girls’ education and recognize its impact, thereby strengthening the progress made in the last 20 years by taking ten steps forward, not ten steps back. For the successful achievement of the SDGs, Afghanistan needs to operate at full capacity, not half her strength. Girls, boys, women, and men all need to be a part of rebuilding Afghanistan.
REFERENCES
A.N.I. (2021, September 20). Female teachers worried about their future in Afghanistan. Yahoo! News. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/female-teachers-worried-future-afghanistan-051947066.html
Akseer, T., Haidary, M. S., Maxwell-Jones, C., Sadat, S. M., Swift, D., Veenstra, K., & Yousufzai, F. A. (2018). A Survey of the Afghan People: Afghanistan in 2018.
Alvi-Aziz, H. (2003). Reconstruction in post-Taliban Afghanistan: women and education. Resources for Feminist Research, 30(3/4), 13-37.
Alvi-Aziz, H. (2008). A progress report on women's education in post-Taliban Afghanistan. International journal of lifelong education, 27(2), 169-178.
Ayoub, L. M. (2000). The crisis in Afghanistan: when will gender apartheid end? Tulsa journal of comparative & international law, 7(2), 513.
Bahous, S. (2021, October 12). Afghanistan’s women are critical to its survival. UNWOMEN. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2021/10/op-ed-ed-bahous-afghanistans-women-are-critical-to-its-survival
Barr, H. (2017). I Won't Be A Doctor, and One Day You'll Be Sick. Human Rights Watch.
Batha, E. (2021, October 11). What will happen to girls’ education in Afghanistan under Taliban rule? Thomson Reuters Foundation News. Retrieved October 13, 2021, from https://news.trust.org/item/20210831110425-cvykj/
BBC NEWS. (2021, September 12). Afghanistan: Taliban announce new rules for female students. BBC NEWS. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58537081
BBC NEWS. (2021, November 21). Afghanistan: Taliban unveil new rules banning women in TV dramas. BBC NEWS. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59368488
Blue, J.V., & Zucchino. D. (2021, October 7). A Harsh New Reality for Afghan Women and Girls in Taliban-Run Schools. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/world/asia/afghan-girls-schools-taliban.html
CEICdata.com. (2020). Afghanistan AF: Primary Education: Teachers: % Female. CEIC Data. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://www.ceicdata.com/en/afghanistan/education-statistics/af-primary-education-teachers--female
Deo, N. (2014). THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION IN AFGHANISTAN. Pakistan Journal of Women's Studies = Alam-e-Niswan = Alam-i Nisvan, 21(1), 1-27.
Education. (2018). UNICEF Afghanistan. Retrieved October 1, 2021, from https://www.unicef.org/afghanistan/education
Firchow, P., & Urwin, E. (2020). Not Just at Home or In The Grave: (Mis)Understanding Women’s Rights in Afghanistan. Journal of intervention and statebuilding, 1-20.
Heather, M. (2013). What sex means for world peace. OpenDemocracy (London).
Jones, A. M. (2008). Afghanistan on the educational road to access and equity. Asia Pacific Journal of Afghanistan, 28(3), 277-290.
Kennedy, M. K. (2006). Afghan Education Shows Progress Amid the Rubble. Education Week, 25(32), 10.
Kavazanjian, L. (2009). Addressing Gender Disparities: An Investigation of Nonformal Education in Afghanistan. Women's policy journal of Harvard, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 7, 40.
Levine, R. (2006). Educating Girls, Unlocking Development. Current History, 105(689), 127-131. http://www.jstor.org.eproxy.lib.hku.hk/stable/45318710
Oxfam. (2011). A place at the table: safeguarding women's rights in Afghanistan. Oxfam briefing paper, 153.
Pereznieto, P., Magee, A., & Fyles, N. (2017). Mitigating threats to girls’ education in conflict-affected contexts: current practice. United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative.
Powell, C. (2014). Women and Girls in the Afghanistan Transition. The Council on Foreign Relations.
Roshan, B. (2004). The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Plight of Afghan Women Two Years After the Overthrow of the Taliban. Berkeley journal of gender, law & justice, 19(1), 270.
Saigol, R. (2002). At Home or in the Grave Afghan Women and the Reproduction of Patriarchy. Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).
Telesetsky, A. (1998). In the Shadows and Behind the Veil: Women in Afghanistan Under Taliban Rule. Berkeley journal of gender, law & justice, 13, 293.
Tripathi, S. (2003, 2003 Oct 06). Women's rights after the Taliban. New Statesman, 16(777), 19.
UNDP. (2021). AFGHANISTAN: Socio-Economic Outlook 2021-2022- Averting A Basic Needs Crisis. United Nations. file:///Users/shruttirajgarhia/Downloads/UNDP-AFG-Afghanistan-Socio-Economic-Outlook-2021-2022%20(1).pdf
UNESCO. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda
UNESCO. (2019). Framework For the Implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Beyond 2019.
UNESCO. (2021). The right to education: What's at stake in Afghanistan? A 20-year review.
Vare, P., & Scott, W. (2007). Learning for a Change: Exploring the Relationship Between Education and Sustainable Development. Journal of education for sustainable development, 1(2), 191-198.
UNICEF, R., & UNGEI. (2019). Afghanistan – Education Equity Profile for Adolescent Girls.
World, B. (2014). Women's Role in Afghanistan's Future: Taking Stock of Achievements and Continued Challenges. Washington, DC.
World Bank, World Development Data. (2021). Population, female (% of total population) - Afghanistan. World Bank Open Data | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL.FE.ZS?locations=AF