As children around the world begin a new school year, 2.6 million Afghan girls remain barred from secondary education—and the Taliban is reshaping what boys learn, too.

This week, children across the United States and much of the world walked back into a classroom. New backpacks. First-day photos. The ordinary rhythm of a new school year.

In Afghanistan, that rhythm does not exist for girls. It has not for five years.

“School was my life. I saw it as my second home, the place where learning gave my life meaning.”

A girl finishing sixth grade the year the Taliban’s ban began, has now turned 18—an adult—and she has not set foot in a classroom since she was a child. That is not an accident of policy. It is the policy.

The Taliban have issued more than 160 edicts and orders, stripping Afghan women and girls of their basic human rights: restricting their freedom of movement, silencing their voices in public, and barring them from parks, gyms and public life itself. These restrictions are enforced through arrests, imprisonment, beatings, torture, flogging and some even by death.

Last week, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid was asked about the continued ban on girls’ education. He said, plainly, “Perhaps now is not the time to discuss this issue.”

Five years in, that is their answer. It has always been their answer.

Five Years Without a Classroom—and No Timeline to End It

There is no exception and no expiration date on the ban. Girls who were 6 years old when it began are now approaching adolescence, knowing they will not be permitted to advance beyond elementary school. The Taliban have offered nothing but the promise of a promise.

“I had completed six semesters of university and believed I was, step by step, reaching my dream. But when girls were banned from continuing their education, my studies remained unfinished.

“We are not just statistics or headlines. We are human beings, with dreams, talents and hearts that still beat for the future. Please do not forget the voices of Afghan women. Our silence does not mean our consent.”

She is one of millions. Afghan women who studied for years, who sacrificed everything for a degree, were told in an instant that none of it counted.

This is not only a tragic story about girls being shut out. The Taliban have hollowed out what boys learn, too. Time for core subjects such as math, science and social studies has been reduced, while subjects and books concerning democracy, human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment have been targeted for removal. Taliban-run religious schools have grown from roughly 5,000 before the group returned to power to more than 23,000 by September 2025, enrolling more than 3.65 million students, according to research by the HAMRAH Network.

This is not collateral damage. It is the same project as the ban on girls: a government engineering an entire generation to know less, question less and inherit less than the one before it.

The Human Cost of Gender Apartheid

This is not abstract. If the ban continues, UNICEF projects an estimated 1,600 additional maternal deaths and more than 3,500 infant deaths by 2030 as the country faces a shortage of trained female doctors and midwives. Social restrictions often prevent Afghan women from receiving medical care from men, making the disappearance of women healthcare workers especially deadly.

More than 2.6 million girls have now been denied secondary education, and women are barred from most work. Families facing desperate economic conditions are increasingly pushed toward devastating choices, including marrying off young girls. Nearly 29 percent of Afghan girls are married before age 18, and girls shut out of school face heightened risks of early marriage, child labor, abuse and gender-based violence.

This is what gender apartheid produces when it goes unpunished.

The U.N. Took a First Step. We Are Demanding the Next One.

The U.N. Human Rights Council has established an independent investigative mechanism to collect and preserve evidence of crimes committed in Afghanistan, including abuses against women and girls. That is real progress—won by years of pressure from Afghan women, survivors, activists and their allies.

But evidence without prosecution is just a file. We are demanding that member states at the United Nations formally recognize gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.

We are delivering a petition directly to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.N. General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock.

Sign the petition demanding U.N. member states codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity—and prosecute it.

Share the petition with friends and ask them to sign it, too. As classrooms fill up everywhere else this week, that contrast is one of the sharpest tools we have to reach people who have never thought about what is happening in Afghanistan.

Talk about it. Global attention on Afghanistan has faded, and an entire generation of Afghan girls cannot afford for our attention to fade, too.

Somewhere in Afghanistan today, a girl who should be starting a new grade is sitting at home. And a boy who is sitting in a classroom is being taught less than he deserves. Neither is an accident. Both are policy—designed to reshape Afghan society and keep the Taliban in power.

We refuse to look away.