Kabul invited to education conference
Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFEPT) Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui on Thursday said a formal invitation had already been sent to Afghanistan to participate in a conference on girls' education.
The international conference on girls' education in Muslim countries would be held from January 11 to 12 in the federal capital with aims to address challenges and opportunities of women.
The Taliban have banned women from universities in Afghanistan, sparking international condemnation and despair among young people in the country.
Weeks after the Taliban seized power in August last year, they reopened high schools for boys on September 18, but banned secondary schoolgirls from attending classes.
Months later on March 23, the education ministry opened secondary schools for girls, but within hours the Taliban leadership ordered them shut again.
Since then, more than a million teenage girls have been deprived of education across the country, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said.
Siddiqui expressed the hope that representative from the Afghan interim government would attend the conference.
Addressing a news conference, the minister said that the conference, jointly organised by the MoFEPT and the Muslim World League (MWL), will be presided over by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
He said the ministry had already sent invitations to 57 counties which was confirmed by 48 countries and added the conference would be attended by leaders, policy makers, diplomats, religious scholars, educationists, and experts from Muslim countries.
The conference's keynote address would be delivered by Nobel Laureate and globally-acclaimed advocate for girls' education Malala Yousafzai, he added.