WOMEN'S RIGHTS
2000: roughly
5,000 girls in school
2012: roughly 3.2 million
girls in school
The Taliban notoriously banned women from attending school. Today, by contrast, there are 3.2 million Afghan girls getting an education. (Enrollment for boys has also increased, rising from fewer than 1 million in 2001 to nearly 5 million today.)
Thanks to these new opportunities, the female literacy rate has tripled since Taliban rule. At 13 percent, it is admittedly still one of the lowest in the world. But even if Afghan women have some catching up to do, they are, according to UNICEF, "hungrier than ever for education" -- despite the risks they take in pursuing those goals.
In the photograph above, Wazhma, 7, raises her hand during class at the Aschiana school on Feb. 28, 2008 in Kabul. Aschiana schools assist thousands of children whose parents cannot afford to send their kids to regular public schools, and there are currently eight in Kabul attending to approximately 10,000 needy students. The majority of those students are girls ranging from ages seven to 17.
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
