This is the latest in a long line of recent stories demonstrating how threatened the Taliban and other ultra-conservative extremists are by the notion of women's empowerment.
That girls' education is a key to women's empowerment is one of the main lessons of people-centered development policies. Education is a human right of all girls and boys. But girls' education is also the surest way to raise a generation of women who can earn their own income, participate meaningfully in decision-making in their families, communities, and country and go on to become mothers who have a much higher chance of raising healthy, educated children.
In fact, girls' education raises national health, development, and economic indicators across the board, in what experts call the "virtuous cycle of girls' education."
To me, the most remarkable thing about these attacks is the sheer courage of the girls themselves. In November, extremists on motorbikes sprayed acid on a group of students from the Mirwais School for Girls in Kandahar. As Nader Nadery and Haseeb Humayoon wrote recently, "Several young women were severely burned." Yet, "It did not take more than a few weeks for even the most cruelly disfigured girls to return to school."
The young women of Afghanistan know that their best shot at a decent life depends on being educated. They are literally fighting for their lives, and we can stand with them by supporting Afghan women who are demanding that girls be able to go to school.
MADRE is working with the Shuhada Organization in Afghanistan, which ran underground schools for girls in the 1990s when the Taliban government made girls' education illegal. Today, they are working to ensure that every Afghan girl and boy is able to go to school and that the full range of women's human rights are upheld in their country.
*Cross-posted at Afghan Watch.
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