PARIS, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Restrictions on women pursuing higher education in Afghanistan are expected to exacerbate a shortage of female teachers, further diluting education quality in a country where millions of children are already unable to attend school, UNESCO said on Wednesday.
• Five years after the Taliban returned to power, about 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan are unable to attend secondary school, while more than 2 million primary school children are out of school, the UN education agency said.
• Women have been banned from universities since December 2022, reversing nearly two decades of progress in girls' education, and are barred from teaching boys.
• UNESCO estimates Afghanistan will have a deficit of more than 11,000 qualified female teachers by 2030.
• "Many teachers have left the country ... and those who were in the system are banned from continuing teaching," Hoda Jaberian, the UNESCO programme coordinator for education in emergencies, said in a briefing.
• "This decision to ban women from teaching boys has not only, of course, removed a substantial number of qualified teachers and educators from the education system, but it also resulted in boys being taught by unqualified male teachers," Jaberian added. "We are left with unqualified male teachers or no teachers at all."
• UNESCO said over 90% of 10-year-olds cannot read a simple text, with national literacy rates at 37%.
• Many schools are overcrowded and poorly equipped. Nearly half of schools lack water, sanitation or heating, UNESCO said.
• In 2025 alone, some 3 million people returned to Afghanistan, either forced or voluntarily, placing further pressure on the schools, and since 2021, natural disasters including earthquakes and floods have forced the closure of 1,000 schools, UNESCO said.
• Afghanistan is the only country in the world to formally bar girls and women from accessing education after primary school.
• UNESCO estimates that the ban on female education could cause 600,000 Afghan women to leave the workforce by 2066, cause $9.6 billion in cumulative income losses and increase the risk of early marriage.
• The Taliban took power again in Afghanistan in 2021 after U.S. troops withdrew from the country.
(Reporting by Lewis Macdonald; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Toby Chopra)
