Afghanistan has progressed significantly in the sector of education during the years 2021 – 2021. According to the Ministry of Education of the Islamic republic of Afghanistan and UNICEF- post August 2021 “the students enrollment increased from 900,000 in 2001 to 9.5 million enrolled in 2021”, while thousands of schools are established and constructed across the country, thousands of teachers (male and female) are capacitated with teaching skills and schooling standards are upgraded. However, the data also shows that even “before 15th August 2021, 4.2 million children were not enrolled in schools, out of which 60% are girls”, and only 19% of the female below 15 years are literate, just 16% of all schools in the country are girls’ schools. The primary education, female teachers were reported 36.157% in 2019, while for the secondary education, female teachers were reported just 35.63 %.
In response to the mentioned statistics around girl students and female teachers, SADA has constantly been advocating for the improvement of girls’ enrollment ratios in schools. In this regard, SADA advocacy teams conducted several campaigns, awareness-sessions and trainings of community elders, religious scholars and parents on village (s), district (s) and provincial levels.
On 17th September 2021, the government announced the re-opening of the secondary schools after being-closed for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the government asked the secondary school girls to stay at home.
On 21 March 2022, the MoE publicly confirmed that 0n 23rd March 2022 schools will start for all children at all levels including girls. However, the last-minute U-turn by the authorities seriously disappointed the girls, families and the people of Afghanistan as the MoE extended the ban on girls’ secondary education until further notice. This ban directly affects 1.1 million secondary schools’ girls.
At this critical situation, SADA as girls’ education activist remain solid and will continue advocating for the re-opening of girls’ secondary schools. SADA will also keep promoting the expansion of girls’ education until every girl of this country have access to quality, safe and free education. Furthermore, SADA will continue advocating for the recruitment of maximum number of female teachers in public schools and educational institutes across the country.
For SADA’s ongoing advocacy programs, please kindly refer to the updated factsheet.
