24/3/2006
Call For Special Focus on Education for Afghan Girls

The literacy rate for Afghan woman is just 14 per cent. It was with this statistic in mind that Rima Salah, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF, called on all Afghan families to give priority to education for the sake of long-term progress. She focused specially on girls who have either been prevented or discouraged from attending school.

Speaking at a special event to mark the start of a new academic year held in the shadow of a huge sandstone arch that formerly housed one of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas, Ms. Salah stressed the importance of universal education to ensure growth and development. “Today is an important day, not just because it is the beginning of another year of opportunity for students; today is another step towards the reconstruction of Afghanistan, towards a country that puts women and girls first.”

While more than 5 million children are expected to attend classes across Afghanistan this year, UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million primary school-age girls will stay at home. Girls’ primary school attendance is just 40 per cent nationally, while the country also reports one of the world’s highest maternal mortality ratios and a women’s literacy rate of just 14 per cent.

Without more attention paid to these issues, Ms. Salah warned, Afghanistan’s efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aimed at remedying a host of socio-economic ills, could be thwarted.

Visiting Surkdaar School in Bamiyan, she met girls attending classes for the first time. Distributing UNICEF-supported classroom materials, and spoke with female teachers who had benefited from UNICEF-backed training programmes, calling the lack of such teachers another obstacle to girls’ enrolment in Afghanistan.

In a reference to the recent spate of attacks against some schools in the country, Ms. Salah told assembled teachers, parents and children: “There is a minority that does not value education as much as you. They will not succeed in holding you back. With your continued determination to provide education for every child, Afghanistan will continue to grow stronger.”