Srinagar

A group of Kashmir women today marched to the local office of the United Nations to demand a global action for ensuring the rights of Muslim women in the south Asian region, particularly in Afghanistan where the Taliban has imposed on ban on women’s education.

The women under the aegis of J&K Youth Society held placards and raised slogans before presenting a memorandum of demands to the UN officials. The memorandum has asked the global community to act for ensuring the women in Afghanistan are allowed to get an education.

It called for the world to not only give human aid to Afghanistan but also ensure the rights of half of the population – women – are not usurped. The women raised the issue of suppression of women in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir because of which they are not able to get an education. “Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, all schools and educational institutions for girls have been shut down.

The two decades of enforced peace under an international mandate had provided a glimmer of hope to thousands of girls and their families that Afghan girls could finally have access to education without fear,” the memorandum said. It further says that while a lot of propaganda is carried out across the UN and other multilateral platforms about the human rights situation in J&K, the propagandists never care to pinpoint the huge gap in the education of women in J&K and the part under Pakistan’s control.

“Absence of modern schools and colleges in PoK and G-B has deprived our sisters of the opportunity that we have come to take for granted in India. Not just in J&K, we have access to any institution of our choice anywhere in India.It is our fervent appeal that the United Nations take note of the deplorable condition of girls’ education, a right that has been cruelly and forcibly snatched away from them for reasons of history, for which they are not responsible nor should they be made to pay the price for it,” the memorandum said.

In Pakistan, the memorandum said that barring urban centers in Sindh and Punjab, access to modern education is lacking in Pakistan even for boys.

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