Islamabad: Pakistani activist for female education and Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai has urged the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan to re-open secondary schools for girls immediately.

It has been one month since the radical Islamists Taliban, which captured the power in August, excluded girls from going back to secondary school while allowing the boys to do so.

Even though the leaders of Taliban have maintained that they will provide all rights to females in the nation including that of education, many are in doubt if this assurance would be true.

Malala put forward the demand of re-opening of secondary schools for girls in an open letter which she authored along with other Afghan women rights activists.

"To the Taliban authorities.. reverse the de factor ban on girls' education and re-open girls' secondary schools immediately," the letter read

In 2012, Malala was shot in the head by the militants of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in her hometown of Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for being the supporter and promoter of female education.

Malala also urged the heads of Muslim nations to point it out to the Taliban that "religion does not justify preventing girls from going to school".

"Afghanistan is now the only country in the world that forbids girls' education," said the authors, who also feature the name of Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the Afghan human rights commission under the last US-backed government in the nation.

The authors also appealed the G20 world leaders to provide urgent funding for an education plan for the children of Afghanistan.

A petition along with the letter on Monday gained more than six lac forty thousand signatures.

With Agencies Input

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