Cultural Genocide in Afghanistan: A Systematic Taliban Campaign to Silence the Future of Girls

Cultural Genocide in Afghanistan: A Systematic Taliban Campaign to Silence the Future of Girls
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Human rights activists say the exclusion of girls from education in Afghanistan is not an administrative decision but part of a deliberate Taliban strategy to eliminate the intellectual potential of the country’s younger generation—an approach that international media argue aligns with legal definitions of “cultural genocide.”

In a new statement, Afghan human rights groups warned that the Taliban’s educational policies—from banning girls from attending school to the mass dismissal of female teachers—now exhibit all the hallmarks of cultural genocide. According to the activists, these measures reflect internal documents from the ruling group and form a core component of what the Taliban describe as their agenda of “consolidation.”

Outlets such as BBC Persian have reported that although hundreds of schools remain officially open, their classrooms sit empty, with no girls allowed to attend. According to figures cited by the Human Rights Activists’ Coalition, more than 1,200 girls’ schools have been shut down over the past two years, and roughly 20,000 female teachers have been removed from the education system.

Experts say these actions—combined with the prohibition on university enrollment for women—amount to a coordinated effort to prevent the intellectual development of the next generation. At the same time, religious instruction for boys has expanded through special funding allocations, and the new curriculum increasingly removes female figures from textbooks and replaces “modern history” with “the history of the caliphate.”

International media reports emphasize that these multilayered policies—from restricting attendance to altering content and closing libraries and student publications—effectively sever the chain of knowledge transmission in the country.

Legal analysts, referencing the 1948 Genocide Convention and Article 7 of the Rome Statute, argue that such policies could constitute crimes against humanity, even in the absence of overt physical violence.

Activists warn that if these practices continue, millions of Afghan girls and young women will be prevented in the coming years from becoming doctors, teachers, writers, or engineers—threatening not only Afghanistan’s future but also the credibility of universal human rights principles.