>From UNWire 12/17/ 2001
AFGHANISTAN: Girls Need Help To Equal Boys'Education,
UNICEF Says Due to suppression of girls' education in Afghanistan by the
defeated Taliban regime, UNICEF project officer in Kabul Reiko Nishijima
says much needs to be done to bring girls to the same educational level as
boys.
"What the Taliban did affected the next generation of girls and maybe even
the next," Nishijima said. "It's a challenge for us to help them catch
up."
The interim administration of Afghanistan faces the challenge of
reconstructing the country's devastated educational system.Schools lack
sufficient textbooks,chairs, desks and blackboards and teachers have not
been paid for months.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that female students have been studying
intensely in schools that until recently were operating in secret. They
have threemonths to catch up with their male counterparts before the start
of the next school term (Sudarsan Raghavan, Philadelphia Inquirer,Dec. 16).
Abdul Rasul Amin, the interim minister foreducation, said it will take up
to six
months to draft a plan for Afghanistan's educational system. "We have a
completely ruined infrastructure," he said.He also noted that after many
years of "extremist ideologies" regarding girls and education in
Afghanistan, "it will be difficult to persuade parents to send their
daughters to schools. But it's not impossible."
UNICEF spokesperson in Pakistan Chulho Hyun said the agency hopes to have
most Afghan schools reopened and staffed by Afghan teachers by early summer
(Integrated Regional Information Networks, Dec.12).
Linda Purring
<lpurring@earthlink.net>
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