UNESCO: 2.4 Million Afghan Girls Remain Shut Out of Secondary Education

An estimated 2.4 million Afghan girls remain excluded from secondary education, five years after the Taliban returned to power, according to UNESCO.

The United Nations education agency said Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are formally prohibited from education beyond the primary level. UNESCO warned that the restrictions are reversing decades of progress in expanding access to education for Afghan girls.

Before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, nearly one million girls were enrolled in secondary education, according to UNESCO. Since then, restrictions on girls’ schooling have steadily expanded, leaving millions without access to classrooms beyond primary school.

Five Years of Lost Educational Opportunity

The number of girls affected has continued to rise as new generations reach secondary-school age.

UNESCO estimated in 2025 that about 2.2 million girls were barred from attending school beyond the primary level. By 2026, that figure had risen to approximately 2.4 million.

The restrictions have also affected women seeking university education and professional training, significantly narrowing opportunities for employment and economic independence.

Education Crisis Extends Beyond Girls

UNESCO has warned that Afghanistan’s education challenges are broader than the prohibition on girls’ secondary schooling.

Falling enrolment, shortages of qualified teachers and declining educational quality are placing pressure on the entire school system. Earlier UNESCO assessments found that millions of primary-school-age children were already out of school and that many children attending classes struggled to achieve basic literacy and numeracy.

The agency has cautioned that excluding women from higher education also affects the future supply of teachers, healthcare professionals and other skilled workers.

Two Decades of Progress Reversed

Afghanistan made significant gains in girls’ education during the two decades before 2021.

Access to schooling for girls had been extremely limited in 2001. Over the following years, enrolment increased substantially, with nearly one million girls eventually attending secondary schools.

UNESCO says the restrictions introduced since 2021 are now reversing much of that progress. The consequences could extend beyond individual students. Reduced access to education can affect household incomes, public health, workforce participation and a country’s longer-term economic development.

UNESCO Calls for Education Rights to Be Restored

Marking five years since the Taliban returned to power, UNESCO renewed its call for the full restoration of the right to education for Afghan girls and women.

The organization has continued supporting alternative educational initiatives inside Afghanistan, including community-based learning, literacy programs and educational content delivered through media and other channels.

However, UNESCO has repeatedly emphasized that such programs cannot replace access to formal secondary and higher education.

A Generation at Risk

The longer the restrictions continue, the more difficult it becomes for students to resume their education.

Girls who were approaching secondary school when the restrictions began in 2021 are now young adults, while millions of younger girls have since reached the age at which they would normally enter secondary education.

That growing education gap raises concerns about an entire generation of Afghan women being denied opportunities to pursue higher education and professional careers.

UNESCO argues that restoring access to education is essential not only for girls and women but also for Afghanistan’s wider social and economic future.

UNESCO — Five Years On, UNESCO Calls for the Full Restoration of the Right to Education for Afghan Girls and Women, August 11, 2026. UNESCO

UNESCO Global Education Monitoring materials — supplementary context on education access and equity. UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO license, permitting reuse and adaptation with attribution. UNESCO Docs

Editorial Note: Arizona Asians independently prepared this article from UNESCO information. The main facts and figures are attributed to UNESCO; restricted commercial news reports were not used as source material.