KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s education minister, Habibullah Agha, is set to attend an international meeting of education ministers in Kazan, Russia.
Mansour Ahmad Hamza, the spokesman for the Taliban-run education ministry, announced on X that the meeting will last for four days.
The invitation extended to the Taliban education minister has drawn strong criticism from human rights defenders and education activists, given the Taliban’s closure of girls’ schools beyond grade six since their takeover of Afghanistan.
Activists emphasize that millions of girls have been deprived of their basic right to education under Taliban rule. Despite international calls for reopening schools for girls above grade six, the Taliban has shown no signs of reforming these oppressive restrictions.
During the Taliban’s first term in power in the 1990s, girls and women were similarly barred from attending schools and universities until the regime’s collapse in 2001.
