Activist urges Muslim leaders to confront Afghanistan’s government over its oppressive policies against girls and women

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders on Sunday not to legitimise the Afghan Taliban government and to "show true leadership" over their assault on women's rights.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders on Sunday to back efforts to make gender apartheid a crime under international law, and called on them to speak out against Afghanistan’s Taliban over its treatment of women and girls.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said she was "overwhelmed" to be back in her native Pakistan on Saturday, as the prime minister launched a global summit on girls' education in the Islamic world.

Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders to back efforts to make gender apartheid a crime under international law.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai decried the state of women’s rights in Taliban-led Afghanistan as “gender apartheid.”

Ms Yousafzai was shot in the face by the Taliban when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2012. Read more at straitstimes.com.

"Simply put, the Taliban in Afghanistan do not see women as human beings," she told an international summit hosted by Pakistan on girls education in Islamic countries. Ms Yousafzai told Muslim leaders there was "nothing Islamic" about the Taliban's policies which include banning female education and stopping women from working.

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The ...

Islamabad: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders on Sunday not to "legitimise" the Afghan Taliban government and to "show true leadership" by opposing their curbs on ...

As reported by Arshad Mehmood, Stanikzai’s bold appeal is the first public challenge from a senior Taliban leader against the policy, which has faced widespread condemnation both domestically and internationally.

A senior Taliban figure has urged the group's leader to scrap education bans on Afghan women and girls, saying there is no excuse for them, in a rare public rebuke of government policy. Sher Abbas Stanikzai, political deputy at the Foreign Ministry, made the remarks in a speech on Saturday in southeastern Khost province.