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Educating Girls
The Taliban have deliberately deprived 1.4 million Afghan girls of schooling through bans, a UN agency said Thursday. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with bans on female secondary and higher education. The Taliban, who took power in 2021, barred education for girls above sixth grade because they said it didn't comply with their interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. They didn't stop it for boys and show no sign of taking the steps needed to reopen classrooms and campuses for girls and women. UNESCO said at least 1.4 million girls have been deliberately denied access to secondary education since the takeover, an increase of 3,00,000 since its previous count in April 2023, with more girls reaching the age limit of 12 every year. If we add the girls who were already out of school before the bans were introduced, there are now almost 2.5 million girls in the country deprived of their right to education, representing 80 per cent of Afghan school-age girls, UNESCO said.
The Supreme Court Monday directed the Centre to lay down a national model for building toilets commensurate with the number of girl students in all government-aided and residential schools across the country. A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud also asked the Union government about the policy it has formulated for distribution of sanitary napkins to female school students nationally. The bench, also comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, said the Centre should bring uniformity in the procedure for distribution of sanitary napkins. During the hearing, the Centre informed the apex court that a draft national policy for distribution of sanitary napkins free of cost to school-going girls has been formulated and sent to stakeholders for eliciting their comments. The top court had earlier warned the states, which had not submitted their response to the Centre on formulating a uniform national policy on menstrual hygiene for girls studying in schools, that it will t