In Pakistan, Malala says the Taliban do not see women as human beings

Speaking at a conference in Islamabad on Sunday, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said he was “very excited and happy” to be back in his homeland. He has returned to Pakistan only a few times since the 2012 attack He returned for the first time in 2018.

On Sunday, he said the Taliban government had once again created a “system of gender apartheid”.

The Taliban “punish women and girls who dare to break their dark laws by beating, imprisoning and harming them,” he said.

He added that the group “cloaks its crimes in cultural and religious justification” but in reality “goes against everything our faith stands for”.

The Taliban declined to comment on the BBC’s lawyer’s request for comment. They have previously said they respect women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law.

The leaders of the group did not attend the summit held by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), although they were invited by the Pakistani government and the Muslim World League.

Conference participants included dozens of ministers and scholars from Muslim-majority countries advocating girls’ education.

Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, its government has not been officially recognized by any foreign government. Western powers have said the group’s restrictive policies against women need to be changed.

Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where women and girls are banned from secondary and tertiary education – one and a half million have been deliberately excluded from school.

The Taliban have repeatedly promised to re-admit them to school once a number of issues are resolved, including ensuring that the curriculum is “Islamic”. This has not happened yet.

In December, women were banned from training as midwives and nurses, closing the country’s last avenue to further education.

Ms. Yousafzai said girls’ education was at risk in many countries. He said Israel had “destroyed the entire education system” in Gaza.

She called on those present to “call out the worst violations” of girls’ right to education, noting that crises in countries including Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan meant “the theft of girls’ entire futures”.