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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Rukhshana reporters, Annie Kelly, Tom Levitt and Hikmat Noori

‘Nobody is coming to help us’: Afghan teenage girls on life without school

A girl in a hijab puts her hand over her face as she cries
A girl breaks down when talking about her lack of access to education. Girls have in effect been banned from secondary schools in Afghanistan for more than three years, with no prospect of the Taliban reversing their policy. Photograph: Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP/Getty Images

Just over three years ago, Asma’s* future contained many possibilities. Aged 15, she was at secondary school. After that lay the prospect of university and then onwards, striding forwards into the rest of her life.

Like many Afghan girls, she understood that education was her route out of the isolation and repression that had constricted the lives of her mother and grandmother under the previous Taliban regime. She was part of a new generation of Afghan women who had the chance to build independent and economically autonomous lives.

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