On August 15, 2021, Taliban fighters entered the presidential palace in Kabul. Within seven months, secondary schools had been closed to girls. Within sixteen, women had been barred from universities. Each step was described as temporary.

Four years later, none has been reversed — and the consequences are now being measured in a generation. UNESCO reported on Tuesday that approximately 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan are currently denied access to secondary education, a figure that has grown by around 200,000 in the past year alone. If the ban remains in place until 2030, the agency projects that the number could approach four million.

Hoda Jaberian, UNESCO's programme coordinator for education in emergencies, was direct about what that span of time means: "Five years is not a temporary interruption in a child's education. It is clearly almost an entire secondary school cycle." Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls and women are formally prohibited from both secondary and higher education. The ban has erased what had been a remarkable, if fragile, achievement.

In 2001, girls had almost no access to formal schooling in Afghanistan. By 2021, nearly one million were enrolled in secondary education — a transformation that UNESCO now describes as having been "completely reversed." The Taliban authorities maintain that their policies reflect a legitimate interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan culture, and insist the matter is an internal one.