The Silent Narrative of Afghan Girls’ Struggle for the Right to Education
She is thirteen years old and has completed sixth grade this year. In every country, this stage marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of new dreams; the start of secondary school, the formation of new goals, and hope for the future. But for her, this moment has been less a source of joy and more the beginning of uncertainty.
Even so, she has not given up. So that her dreams do not fade and her motivation is not lost in silence, she used her family’s modest savings to buy seventh-grade textbooks, carefully chose colorful notebooks, prepared her pens, and set aside a new bag and new clothes, just like millions of students around the world who prepare themselves for a new academic year.
With one major difference: there may be no school to return to.
Still, she continues to prepare. Time and again, she swallows her tears so that sorrow does not overwhelm her. Longing for school has left her exhausted many times, but each time she wipes her tears away, embraces her books, and rises again. Books have become her only refuge for her wounds; a few pieces of paper and a pen, something that in today’s Afghanistan, owning and holding in one’s hands is considered a crime for a girl.
She eagerly awaits spring; the beginning of the school year, the sound of a school bell that may never ring again. Every day she asks herself:
“Will the world care this year? Will anyone stand up for our right to education?”
She has planned for the winter. She has promised herself to spend three full months studying all the lessons of seventh grade on her own, so that if schools reopen, she will be more prepared than anyone else; stronger, more determined, and more hardworking. She says that if necessary, she will stay awake at night, study more, and earn top grades.
Her goals are big; so big that they cannot be buried by silence.
She decorates her notebooks with care, not for entertainment, but to keep alive a motivation that grows weaker every day under the pressure of the world’s indifference. Every page is a form of resistance. Every word is a refusal to be erased. But this is not just the story of one girl.
This is the story of millions of girls across a country called Afghanistan; girls whose country has turned into a prison for their dreams. Girls who say,
“The world has sentenced us to years of imprisonment.”
Five years have passed, yet their “crime”-being girls-has still not been forgiven.
In a country where school should be a place of safety and hope, being a girl today means deprivation. Deprivation of education, of opportunity, of a future. Afghanistan has become a place where dreams are postponed and silence replaces classrooms.
The consequences of this deprivation are devastating: an increase in forced marriages, deeper poverty, a mental health crisis, and the systematic removal of women from public life. A society that deprives half of its population of education not only violates human rights, but also destroys its own future.
According to reports published by international organizations, more than 2.5 million girls in Afghanistan are deprived of secondary education. This is not a cultural or internal issue; it is one of the most severe violations of women’s rights in the world today.
Yet the global response remains dangerously inadequate. The international community cannot speak of human rights while remaining silent in the face of such clear injustice. Silence here is not neutrality; it is complicity. Every day without action extinguishes another dream. Every delay sacrifices another generation.
If the world leaves them alone today, history tomorrow will ask a simple question:
Why did you not break the silence when you could?
Author: Karishma Nazari