After the Taliban‘s fall from power, there was great hope that Afghanistan‘s girls would finally get the chance to get an education.
Yet 17 years on, most Afghan girls are still out of school, despite the international community donating billions of dollars in aid.
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Critics point to corruption within the country’s education system, lack of oversight by donors and social attitudes that remain deeply discriminatory against girls.
Even for the girls who do get the chance to get an education, conditions are often rudimentary at best.
Since 16-year-old Mahnoz Aliyar started coming to Kabul’s Sayedul Shohada School in grade one, the number of girls has more than doubled.
It’s a welcome sign of progress, but now the school can’t accommodate all of its 14,000 students.
With girls and boys not permitted to attend classes together, the buildings are reserved for the boys while the girls study outside.
Five years ago, Japanese donors built two new buildings specifically for the girls, but community leaders decided to give them to the boys.
“Right now, it’s the boys’ school, I don’t know why. It makes me really angry,” says Mahnoz. “In school, the conditions are so hard for girls especially. In our country, we have lots of problems. But in schools, we have more problems.”
101 East gets rare access to go inside the Sayedul Shohada School in Kabul. We meet the girls desperate to get an education and investigate whether the international community and the Afghan government is failing to honour their promise to educate a generation of girls.