With the headline “Afghanistan: Il velo dei diritti negati” [Afghanistan: The veil of denied rights], the Vatican newspaper devoted the most prominent front-page coverage in its March 21 edition to the continued exclusion of young Afghan women from the nation’s secondary schools and universities, a policy that entered into force in March 2022.
The unsigned article drew extensively on an AFP report in which Zuhal Shirzad, an 18-year-old young woman, was quoted. The Vatican newspaper article concluded, “May the dream of Zuhal and of so many young people like her be able to become reality.”