Dozens protest in Kabul against Taliban ban on girls in school

Dozens of teachers, students and women's rights activists rallied in Kabul on Saturday against a ban on girls attending school beyond the sixth grade. Local media shared footage of a few dozen women, together with girls wearing school uniforms and carrying textbooks, demanding their rights to study and work in Afghanistan. They want to see all girls' schools reopened across the country. The Taliban has previously harassed the participants of similar protests and those who have sought to report on them. An organizer told dpa that the march had begun in front of the education ministry in the capital and ended peacefully. On Wednesday, more than a million Afghan girls got ready to return to school but were turned away following a last-minute reversal of the Taliban's decision to reopen schools for them. The fundamentalist movement, which seized control of the country in a blitzkrieg in August 2021, gave no reason for the turnaround, which sparked national outcry. International organizations and world governments have also called on the Taliban to reconsider their decision immediately. 'Our message is clear: All girls in Afghanistan should be able to go to school,' 10 members of the UN Security Council said in a joint statement late Friday. Since the Taliban takeover, the hardliners have curtailed the rights of Afghans. Girls and women have been deprived of many of their rights and protests against the changes have been suppressed.