+ ↺ − 16 pxUNESCO says about 2.4 million girls in Afghanistan remain barred from secondary education, renewing its call for the Taliban to lift restrictions on girls’ access to school. UNESCO said on Tuesday that the number of girls deprived of secondary school in the country has grown by 200,000 since last year’s count, and could approach four million by 2030, Al Jazeera reported. Afghanistan is the only country in the world to stop girls and women attending secondary schools and universities, among multiple restrictions on women that have led the UN to accuse the country of “gender apartheid”. The UN notes that the ban adds to a number of compounding issues weighing on Afghanistan’s education system and economy. The Taliban government has rejected global calls, including from several Muslim-majority governments, to lift its ban on girls’ education, describing the policy as an internal matter.