Afghanistan’s schools have reopened for the new academic year, but hundreds of thousands of teenage girls remain barred from attending classes as Taliban authorities ban their attendance in secondary school. Taliban leaders, who also banned women from university education in December, have repeatedly claimed they will reopen secondary schools for girls once “conditions” have been met, including remodelling the syllabus along Islamic lines. “They are essentially saying that for now they cannot go to school, and I would argue to them that these girls are human beings, that they have a right to healthcare, they have a right to an education and those rights need to be respected,” Russell said