The United Nations on Sunday called on the Taliban to reopen high schools for girls across Afghanistan, condemning the ban, which began exactly a year ago, as “tragic and shameful”.

Weeks after the Taliban seized power in August last year, the hard-line Islamists reopened high schools for boys on September 18, 2021, but banned secondary school students from attending.

Months later, on March 23, the Ministry of Education opened secondary schools for girls, but within hours the Taliban leadership ordered classes to be closed.

Since then, more than a million teenage girls across the country have been denied an education, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.

“This is a tragic, shameful and totally avoidable anniversary,” said Markus Potzel, acting head of UNAMA, in a statement.

“It is deeply damaging to a generation of girls and to the future of Afghanistan itself,” he said, adding the ban has no parallel anywhere in the world.

UN chief Antonio Guterres called on the Taliban to lift the ban.

“A year of lost knowledge and opportunity they will never get back,” Guterres said on Twitter.

“Girls belong in school. The Taliban have to let them back in.”

Several Taliban officials say the ban is temporary, but they have also offered a litany of excuses for the closures – from a lack of money to the time it will take to reshape the curriculum along Islamic lines.

Earlier this month, the education minister was quoted by local media as saying it was a cultural issue as many rural residents did not want their daughters to go to school.

After seizing power on August 15 last year amid a chaotic withdrawal of foreign forces, the Taliban promised a softer version of their harsh Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.

But within days they began imposing severe restrictions on girls and women to conform to their strict vision of Islam – effectively edging them out of public life.

Aside from closing high schools for girls, the Taliban have barred women from many government jobs and also ordered them to cover themselves in public, preferably with an all-encompassing burqa.

Some secondary schools for girls in provinces away from the central power bases of Kabul and Kandahar remained open due to pressure from families and tribal leaders.