October 11 is the International Day of the Girl, observed to promote girls’ rights, education, equal opportunities, and a better future for girls around the world. Each year, the day’s chosen theme focuses on a specific goal: protecting girls’ rights and freedoms. The 2026 theme, announced by the United Nations and UNICEF, is “Ending Child Marriage,” an issue that has grown at an alarming rate over the past five years in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. After being denied their fundamental rights, girls are increasingly pushed into early marriage. Family and social pressures, restrictions imposed by the ruling group, and despair about the future lead some girls to see marriage at a young age as their only escape from their suffocating circumstances.
This year’s message, “End Child Marriage and Invest in Girls’ Rights,” highlights the exclusion of Afghan girls, who struggle to reclaim their fundamental rights while living in a country increasingly cut off from the rest of the world.
On this occasion, a number of girls have used art, poetry, and literature to make their voices heard. Through different forms of expression, they protest the ruling anti-women regime and seek to share messages of hope, freedom, and solidarity with their peers.
Fatima has created an artwork depicting freedom, resistance, struggle, and the world’s silence in the face of the suffering of Afghan women and girls. Through her work for the International Day of the Girl Child, she says she hopes Afghan girls will one day live freely instead of longing for freedom; laugh in classrooms instead of crying over the closure of schools; and speak openly about achieving their dreams instead of being forced into silence.
The painting conveys a message of oppression, silence, hope, and freedom. It tells the story of girls whom the world looks at but does not hear—girls whose dreams remain behind closed doors, yet whose hearts still hold on to the hope of freedom.
“The girl dressed in red in this artwork represents a girl who, despite all the restrictions, still reaches out toward the light. She wants to be seen, to have her voice heard, and to make decisions about her own future,” Fatima says.
Aziza marked the day by reciting a poem by Simin Behbahani, emphasizing resistance, perseverance, and the struggle against the Taliban regime. She calls on all Afghan girls to use every possible means to regain their place in society and pursue their goals.
She says that the resistance, protests, and voices of women and girls inside and outside Afghanistan over the past five years have shown that Afghan women will not accept silence and will spare no effort in pursuing their demands. She also stresses that their resistance and protests represent the voice of Afghan society today—a voice that has not been silenced despite torture and repression.
In tribute to Afghanistan’s courageous women and girls, Aziza dedicates the following poem by Simin Behbahani to them:
You may wish me gone, but I will remain; I will not leave my homeland behind.
As long as there is a field to stand in, I will stand; I will never retreat to the sidelines.
A whole field of poetry and words is mine; I carry the spirit of my homeland.
I am the swift gazelle of verse; I will not be an easy prey.
I live through speaking, through fervor and defiance.
I fear neither stone nor cliff; I cannot be restrained like a flood.
Why should I hide my hair through deceit? Why should I be like Gordafarid?
I am a woman who, through dishonor, will never retreat behind a fortress.
Marwa, another girl who marked the occasion through an act of protest, combed her long hair and said that over the past five years, the Taliban have deprived Afghan women and girls of work, education, and freedom because of their gender. She added that women and girls have also been arrested, imprisoned, and tortured on various pretexts, including failure to comply with the group’s dress code.
“How painful it is to be a girl and know that, because of your gender, the rulers of your country are even willing to fight the world to chain you within their mistaken beliefs and an ideology that reproduces oppression, depriving you of all your fundamental rights. Sometimes, they imprison and torture you and hurl accusations of blasphemy and insults at you simply because a strand of your hair is visible. I am one of those girls from my homeland—a girl who has forgotten that girls have a day of their own,” she says.
The neglect of Afghan girls is a worrying issue not only internationally but also within Afghan society. Five years of Taliban rule have emptied public life of women and girls, transforming not only the outward appearance of society but also its inner fabric. Marwa says she fears the day when women and girls are completely erased from every sphere of social life.
The International Day of the Girl arrives as Afghan girls have been barred from attending schools and universities and participating actively in society for more than five years. They continue to struggle for their fundamental rights and pay a heavy price: five years of exclusion, early marriage, risks to their physical health, mental health problems, and prolonged absence from nearly every sphere of social life.
