Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent estimate she has made of the number and proportion of Afghan (a) children and (b) girls who are out of school; and if she will make a statement.

Education was a key success of the last twenty years in Afghanistan. School enrolment improved greatly, growing from 1 million students in 2001 (10% girls) to nearly 10 million in 2021 (38% girls). UNICEF estimated that 3.7 million children are out-of-school in Afghanistan, 60% of them are girls. The Taliban's actions to ban girls from secondary school have only driven this number higher and we are working with international partners to understand the full impact. The UK deplores the Taliban's decision to prevent girls returning to secondary school education. We have joined the international community in condemnation, including signing shared statements shared international statements, and making our views clear at the UNSC. Afghan women at home and in the diaspora here in the UK have demanded that girls' right to education be upheld, and we stand with them.

We call on the Taliban to urgently reverse this decision and allow all girls to go to school.