RASC News Agency: The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has sounded a grave alarm over the ongoing collapse of Afghanistan’s education system, warning that after more than three years under Taliban rule, millions of children particularly girls are being denied even the most basic right to learn. The report paints a devastating picture of a nation where ignorance is not the byproduct of war, but the deliberate policy of those in power.
In its newly released joint assessment with UNESCO, dated Monday, October 13, UNICEF revealed that more than 2.13 million Afghanistani children remain out of school, ranking the crisis among the largest educational catastrophes in the modern world. The agency warns that this figure may continue to rise as families, crushed under the weight of poverty and repression, withdraw their children especially daughters from classrooms that have already been stripped of teachers, resources, and hope.
The report identifies two interconnected forces driving this collapse: the Taliban’s systematic assault on girls’ education and the suffocating poverty that has forced countless boys into child labor. With unemployment soaring, economic collapse deepening, and international aid restricted due to Taliban mismanagement and corruption, education has become a luxury that few families can afford.
“Afghanistan’s children are being trapped in a vicious cycle of deprivation and despair,” the UNICEF report stated, warning that the combination of poverty and ideological repression is erasing an entire generation’s future.
According to UNICEF and UNESCO, Afghanistan’s education system at the secondary level has “effectively disintegrated.” Even where schools remain open, the quality of instruction has plummeted. Most teachers are underpaid, untrained, or have fled the country. In many rural districts, Taliban authorities have replaced qualified educators with religious clerics who lack basic pedagogical knowledge but enforce ideological conformity.
The report describes the situation as a “profound learning crisis” a term that captures not only the absence of access but also the erosion of learning itself. Even children who attend primary schools are failing to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Classrooms, once vibrant spaces of curiosity and ambition, have been reduced to empty shells under a regime that fears education more than poverty itself.
UNICEF and UNESCO also issued a direct condemnation of the Taliban’s regressive policies, describing them as “a deliberate campaign to erase women and girls from public life.” The agencies called on the Taliban to immediately lift their bans on secondary and higher education for girls, to reopen teacher training institutions for women, and to restore international cooperation in the education sector steps that the regime has stubbornly refused.
The report forecasts a bleak future if these restrictions persist. By 2030, nearly four million Afghanistani girls are expected to remain excluded from secondary education, entrenching a gender divide so deep that it could cripple the nation’s development for decades. “No country can progress when half of its population is denied the right to learn,” the report warned.
Experts say that what the Taliban call “Islamic education policy” is, in reality, a calculated strategy of control one that transforms ignorance into obedience. Education specialists and human rights advocates emphasize that Taliban authorities see knowledge as a threat to their ideological supremacy. “An educated girl is a voice the Taliban cannot silence,” said a Kabul-based activist interviewed by RASC News. “That is why they have built a prison of darkness around every classroom in this country.”
Prior to the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Afghanistan had made measurable progress: millions of girls were attending schools, female teachers had returned to classrooms, and international organizations were expanding literacy programs even in remote regions. In just three years, those hard-won achievements have been obliterated. What once symbolized Afghanistan’s fragile hope for renewal has now been replaced by a system of enforced ignorance one that the international community increasingly recognizes as a form of gender apartheid.
Economic analysts also warn that the long-term effects of these policies will be catastrophic. The denial of education to half of the country’s population will deepen poverty, reduce productivity, and isolate Afghanistan from the global economy. The country, once on a slow path toward reconstruction, is now drifting toward irreversible decline under a leadership that thrives on regression.
UNICEF’s report concludes with a dire warning: without urgent intervention and international pressure, Afghanistan could soon become the only country on earth where girls are legally banned from education. Such a precedent, experts say, would not only condemn millions to a life of servitude but also serve as a chilling symbol of what unchecked extremism can achieve in the absence of global accountability.
“Education is not a privilege it is a lifeline,” UNICEF reiterated. “To deny it is to destroy a nation’s future.”
For millions of Afghanistani children, that lifeline has already been severed. And as long as the Taliban remain in power, the light of learning will continue to fade one classroom, one child, and one shattered dream at a time.
