UN to support clandestine schools for girls in Afghanistan

SAccording to the Efe news agency, the announcement was made by the UN envoy for Global Education, the British Gordon Brown, at a virtual press conference that marked the second anniversary of the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan and that had as its central theme the United Nations efforts to reverse the exclusion of girls from secondary schools and universities.

“We will finance and sponsor ‘e-learning’ and support clandestine schools, as well as the education of girls forced to leave Afghanistan”, said Gordon Brown, quoted by Efe.

However, the British did not provide details about the schools “for fear that they will be closed”, but specified that “several organizations are supporting clandestine schools”.

Brown also announced that she had taken the issue of the exclusion of women from schools in Afghanistan to the International Criminal Court and argued before prosecutor Karim Khan that banning female education amounts to “gender apartheid” and can be considered “a crime against humanity”. .

According to Efe, Brown, who has not yet received a response from Khan, argued that the ban violates at least three UN international conventions: the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on Women’s Rights and the Convention on Human Rights. Economic and Social, since education is “a fundamental right”.

Brown also stressed that the international community “can and must do more” to force the Taliban to reverse the decision and suggested, for example, that the US and the UK follow the example of the European Union in applying concrete sanctions to Afghanistan.

Another suggestion by the British was that Muslim countries send a delegation to Kandahar – the stronghold of the Taliban regime – to explain that Islam does not support in any way the deprivation of girls’ education.

The diplomat also said that he knows that there are “fissures in the Afghan regime” due to increasingly stringent measures against women, such as exclusion from public places, including cemeteries, and that the world should exploit them to reason with the hard core. of the entrenched regime in Kandahar.

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