Schooling Afghanistan’s 50 Percent
Attacks on Afghan girls’ schools are sadly nothing new. Though schools for young women account for only 19 percent of all Afghan schools, a 2009 report by InterAction member CARE, the Afghan Ministry of Education and the World Bank showed that 40 percent of all attacks on educational institutions were on girls’ schools. Since the line between local criminal groups and Taliban forces is often a thin one, legal action is not always thorough and attacks can be difficult to attribute to any specific organization.
Students, teachers and NGO workers are typical targets of extremist groups using forms of intimidation that include threatening letters that come in the middle of the night, acid attacks on girls walking home from school and bombings. When these difficulties fuse with the fact, both hopeful and frightening, that one in five Afghanis are school-aged, the prospect of educating future Afghan leaders – and including young women in the process – emerges as a task that is as daunting as it is necessary.
Despite the constant threats, advancements for girls’ education following U.S. removal of Taliban leadership have been significant. Since 2001, Afghanistan has seen school enrollment for girls increase dramatically, from about 5,000 girls to 2.7 million. USAID has worked with local and international organizations to train thousands of women teachers, fund girls’ schools and establish female-led youth development councils. A recent study conducted by The Asia Foundation reported that 85 percent of Afghans surveyed believed that women and men should have equal access to education. When women were asked to rank the biggest problems faced by their gender, 25 percent cited education and illiteracy, and while this made it the biggest worry, the statistic still represents a large drop – in 2006, the number was 41 percent.
Meanwhile, of the 22 education projects listed on USAID’s website, 16 of them have ended. The U.K.-based organization Action Aid published a report revealing that out of 1,000 Afghan women surveyed, 86 percent feared the reemergence of Taliban following NATO withdrawal – one in five women in the same group said the reason behind their fear was their daughters’ education. The struggle has not ended.
The impact of USAID-backed projects on Afghan organizations and institutions may be felt for a while longer. However, given Afghanistan’s precarious security situation, and with government funding expecting to dry up in the next two years, the progress of women’s education is in jeopardy. Without local and international aid groups picking up the slack, girls’ education could be put on the back-burner, a risk the U.S. and Afghanistan cannot afford to take.
Photo Credit: Lizette Potgieter / Shutterstock.com
