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185 days ago, the Taliban ordered an effective ban on girls’ secondary education in Afghanistan. Malala Fund's policy brief - Rights in jeopardy: How the international community should respond to the girls’ education crisis in Afghanistan - estimates that this decision has nearly doubled the number of out-of-school girls at the secondary level in Afghanistan and cost Afghan girls more than 200 million days of learning to date.

Access to 12 years of free, safe, quality education is the right of all Afghan girls and fundamental to creating a peaceful, prosperous future for Afghanistan. This paper calls on governments and the international community to take urgent action to tackle the humanitarian and economic crises, prevent the collapse of the education system, and work toward a sustainable solution to the political crisis. The paper lays out recommendations for how this can be achieved.