Mapaballo Borotho
- Afghanistan has officially banned women from all education beyond Grade 6, affecting over 2.2 million girls.
- Taliban men were filmed celebrating the decision, sparking global outrage.
- Human rights groups warn that this leaves online learning as Afghan girls’ only remaining path to education.
Taliban men have been seen celebrating the suspension of women’s education in Afghanistan.
Taliban celebrate closure of girls school by dancing in their empty classroom.
In Afghanistan girls are banned from attending school beyond sixth grade.
Over 2.2 million girls and women have been barred from secondary and higher education.💔 pic.twitter.com/QY4OwscCL7
— WDI.Afghanistan (@WDIAfghanistan1) January 25, 2026
This comes after Afghanistan’s education minister, Mawlawi Habibullah Agha, announced that Afghan women are now permanently banned from accessing education beyond the sixth grade, meaning women are no longer allowed to access secondary and tertiary education in the Islamic state.
This decision affects more than 2.2 million teenage girls, making Afghanistan the only country in the world with such a nationwide ban.
In a short video clip, Agha warned that the question that keeps being asked, whether women’s education has been banned indefinitely, is also banned, citing that people ask such questions for their own agendas.
This has sparked a lot of outrage on social media, with human rights groups calling on the public to help Afghan girls with online education, since it is their only remaining chance to study.
In some of the videos shared by human rights groups, Taliban men can be seen singing and dancing with guns on air, celebrating this ban.
Shortly after returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban barred girls from secondary schools and later extended the restrictions to higher education, employment, the gym, and other sectors, effectively excluding women and girls from public life.
UN experts, rights groups, and activists widely agree that the Taliban’s systematic oppression of women constitutes “gender apartheid,” a system that subjugates them solely because of their gender.
Despite repeated appeals from the United Nations, rights groups, and some Islamic countries over the past four years, the Taliban has refused to reverse the ban, insisting that it is an internal matter.
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