Doha: The Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai said on Saturday that the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education would not last forever emphasizing that Afghan women now know what it is to be “empowered”.
Addressing Doha Forum, Mala said that she think it was much easier for the Taliban to enforce a ban on girls’ education back in 1996, but now it is not so easy.
“It is much harder this time — that is because women have seen what it means to be educated, what it means to be empowered. This time is going to be much harder for the Taliban to maintain the ban on girls’ education.”This ban will not last forever.” Malala maintained
Yousafzai, who survived a Pakistani Taliban assassination attempt when she was 15, said girls’ schooling should be a condition of diplomatic recognition for the Taliban.
“They shouldn’t be recognized if they didn’t recognize the human rights of women and girls,” Malala added.
Taliban regime closed girls’ secondary schools just hours after reopening them this week, prompting a small protest by women and girls in the capital Kabul.
The Taliban stopped girls from attending school during its rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 when it was ousted by the US-led invasion.
It quickly returned to power as US forces withdrew last year.
The United States canceled planned talks in Doha with the Taliban after the schools were shut this week.
Fawzia Koofi, the former chairperson of Afghanistan’s Women, Civil Society and Human Rights Commission, told the forum: “It’s basically a genocide of a generation.”
“How could anyone in this world in the 21st century… ban girls from education? I don’t think the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world, should accept,” she said.
