<
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/jun/14/nobody-is-coming-to-help-us-afghan-teenage-girls-on-life-without-school>
"Just over three years ago, Asma’s* future contained many possibilities. Aged
15, she was at secondary school. After that lay the prospect of university and
then onwards, striding forwards into the rest of her life.
Like many Afghan girls, she understood that education was her route out of the
isolation and repression that had constricted the lives of her mother and
grandmother under the previous Taliban regime. She was part of a new generation
of Afghan women who had the chance to build independent and economically
autonomous lives.
In May 2021, a few months before Taliban militants swept to power, Asma was in
class when bombs began exploding outside her secondary school. She woke up in
hospital to learn that 85 people, mostly other schoolgirls, had been killed. By
the time she had started to recover, the Taliban were in charge and her chances
of returning to school were over for good.
It is now past 1,000 days since the Taliban declared schools only for boys, and
an estimated 1.2 million teenage girls such as Asma were in effect banned from
secondary schools in Afghanistan.
What has happened to them since has been catastrophic: forced and early
marriage, domestic violence, suicide, drug addiction and an eradication from
all aspects of public life, with no end in sight.
“We’ve now reached 1,000 days, but there is no end date to the horror of what
is happening to teenage girls in Afghanistan,” says Heather Barr from Human
Rights Watch. “What the Taliban have done is not put the dreams of all these
girls on hold, they have obliterated them.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
