The Taliban “do not see women as human beings,” says Malala from Pakistan

Malala Yousafzai called on Muslim leaders to challenge the Taliban government in Afghanistan and its repressive policies against girls and women.

“Simply put, the Taliban in Afghanistan do not see women as human beings,” she said at an international summit organized in Pakistan on girls’ education in Islamic countries.

Ms Yousafzai told Muslim leaders there was “nothing Islamic” about the Taliban’s policies, which included banning women’s education and preventing women from working.

The 27-year-old was evacuated from Pakistan at the age of 15 after she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman who targeted her for speaking out about girls’ education.

Speaking at a conference in Islamabad on Sunday, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said she was “shocked and happy” to return to her country. She has returned to Pakistan only a few times since the 2012 attack returning for the first time in 2018.

On Sunday, she said the Taliban government had re-established a “system of gender apartheid”.

The Taliban “punish women and girls who dare to violate their obscure laws by beating, detaining and harming them,” she said.

She added that the group “covers its crimes with a cultural and religious justification” but in reality “goes against everything that our faith stands for”.

The Taliban declined to respond to the BBC’s request for comment on the defender’s remarks. They have previously said they respect women’s rights according to their interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law.

The group’s leaders were invited to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit by the Pakistani government and the Muslim World League but did not attend.

The conference included dozens of ministers and academics from Muslim-majority countries who advocated for girls’ education.

Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, its government has not been officially recognized by any foreign government. Western powers have said the group’s policy of restricting women must be changed.

Currently, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where women and girls are prohibited from receiving secondary and higher education – about one and a half million are deliberately deprived of education.

The Taliban have repeatedly promised that they will be readmitted to the school once a number of issues are resolved – including ensuring that the curriculum is “Islamic”. This has not happened yet.

In December, women were also banned from training to become midwives and nurses, effectively closing their last path to further education in the country.

Ms Yousafzai said girls’ education was under threat in many countries. She said Israel had “destroyed the entire education system” in Gaza.

She urged those present to “call out the worst violations” of girls’ right to education and noted that crises in countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan meant that “the entire future of girls has been stolen”.