An Iranian UConn student shares hopes for her home country amid conflict. UConn international student Sadaf Zarei discusses the plight of the Iranian women’s soccer team, whose captain abandoned her request for asylum in Australia out of fear for her family’s safety from the oppressive Iranian regime. Zarei highlights widespread digital blackouts and human rights abuses, and calls for an end to the “criminal terrorist entity” currently in power. NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Five years after the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan, 2.4 million girls remain excluded from secondary school, erasing decades of progress and leaving a generation of young women without access to classrooms. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world that formally prohibits girls and women from receiving education beyond the primary level, according to UNESCO, which issued a new call on Tuesday for the “immediate and unconditional” restoration of their right to education. The United Nations agency warned that the consequences of the Taliban’s policies now go far beyond the classroom: Women are excluded from most paid jobs and public professions and face restrictions on their ability to travel without a male guardian. MOSCOW AND TALIBAN FORGE MILITARY ALLIANCE IN POWER AFTER US EXIT FROM AFGHANISTAN: REPORTS Afghan girls participate in a lesson at the Tajrobawai Girls’ High School in Herat, Afghanistan, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)”Women have been erased from public life and, as “As a new generation of girls grows up without education, their future becomes increasingly darker,” UNESCO said in a statement. The Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, when US and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan after two decades of war. The Taliban soon banned girls from attending secondary schools and later expanded restrictions to universities, employment and other areas of public life. Humanitarian groups, human rights advocates and several Islamic countries, the Taliban have refused to lift educational restrictions and have maintained that the issue is an internal matter, according to The Associated Press. IRAN AGREES NOT TO EXECUTE EIGHT WOMEN LINKED TO PROTESTS AGAINST THE REGIME AFTER TRUMP’S PUBLIC APPEAL The Taliban have refused to lift their educational restrictions on girls and women despite long-standing international pressure. (© UNESCO/Navid Rahi) The impact has been a dramatic reversal in the educational gains made by Afghan girls over the previous two decades. While girls had severely limited access to school in 2001, nearly 1 million were enrolled in secondary education in 2021, according to UNESCO. Five years later, an estimated 2.4 million girls are excluded from secondary education. “Five years is not a temporary interruption in a child’s education,” Hoda Jaberian, UNESCO’s emergency education program coordinator, said during a video news conference Tuesday, according to The AP. Nearly half of Afghanistan’s population lives below the poverty line, according to UNESCO, which said preventing women from studying and working further limits their ability to support their families and contribute to the country’s economy. The agency also warned that excluding girls from school can harm their physical and mental well-being and increase the risk of early marriage. Afghan children. UNESCO said the Taliban’s ban on female teachers teaching children is worsening the teacher shortage and undermining the quality of education across Afghanistan. TRUMP BETS ECONOMIC PRESSURE CAN SQUEEZE IRAN WHILE THE REGIME’S OWN FAILURES DEEPEN THE PAIN Women wear burqas in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 7, 2022. (Sayed Khodaiberdi Sadat/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) With formal secondary and higher education closed to For women and girls, UNESCO says it has resorted to community education, literacy and skills development programs and psychosocial support to continue learning. Nearly 70,000 people have participated in UNESCO programs, and women represent 73% of students, according to the agency. Some literacy and skills classes are held in community spaces and in the homes of facilitators with the knowledge of authorities, according to The AP. More than 1,000 literacy facilitators participate, most of whom have been trained by UNESCO and its partners. UNESCO said a recent study found evidence that its literacy and skills programs have helped increase household incomes and improve livelihoods. The agency recognized, however, that such efforts cannot replace formal education. “Afghanistan’s girls and women have the right to learn, work, move freely and shape their own future,” UNESCO said, adding that “the world must not look away.” until their human rights are restored.” CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP UNESCO said it would continue to work with local communities and partners to maintain alternative opportunities for Afghan women and girls while pushing for the education ban to be lifted. “UNESCO continues to call for the immediate and unconditional restoration of girls and women’s right to secondary and higher education,” Jaberian said Tuesday. “It is non-negotiable. It is a basic human right and we reiterate that there is no substitute for this.” The Associated Press contributed to this report. Stepheny Price is a staff writer for Fox News focusing on West Coast and Midwest news, missing persons, domestic and international crime stories, homicide cases and border security.
