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The Taliban takeover has narrowed the routes through which many Afghans—especially girls and women—can learn and practise reading, while authorities have issued specific directives affecting university curricula and library materials. Community literacy courses and educational media offer some alternatives. But the available evidence does not establish that public libraries nationwide have closed or changed in a uniform way: the documented library directives concern universities, and there is no current nationwide account of public-library operations or readers’ habits.
Why education restrictions matter for reading
Reading culture depends on more than whether books are physically available. Schools and other learning settings help people acquire literacy, find reading material, and build a regular practice. When access to formal education is restricted, those opportunities contract too—but a school-exclusion figure is not a count of people denied library access.
UNESCO reported in August 2025 that nearly 2.2 million girls were barred from attending school beyond primary level. That figure describes exclusion from education, not library use. It is the clearest current measure in the sources reviewed of how restrictions can narrow girls’ access to places and routines where reading skills are taught and developed.
Earlier figures give context, but they measure different periods. UNESCO reported in August 2024 that at least 1.4 million girls had been denied access to secondary education since 2021. It also reported that primary-school enrollment among girls and boys was 5.7 million in 2022, down from 6.8 million in 2019, attributing the decline to several factors, including restrictions on female teachers teaching boys and worsening socioeconomic conditions. These 2024 figures should not be treated as equivalent to UNESCO’s 2025 count.
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What is documented about libraries and learning materials
The clearest evidence about library collections concerns private university libraries—not public libraries, school libraries, or every community reading space.
Private university libraries
A 2024 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan says the de facto Ministry of Higher Education issued a directive on 21 December 2023 to review and eliminate books from private university libraries that conflict with Hanafi jurisprudence or are considered ideologically inappropriate. This documents a directive and its stated scope; it is not a survey of what was removed from every library.
University courses and materials
UNESCO’s Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025 says the de facto Ministry of Higher Education instructed universities in August 2025 to remove 18 subjects, including civic education, gender studies, political systems and governance, philosophy and ethics, and history of religions. The report also says that, according to the de facto authorities, 679 books and learning materials were to be banned in universities for conflicting with cultural and religious values. The figure is a reported measure concerning university materials, not an independently verified count of items physically removed or a count of books taken from public-library shelves.
These policies matter to reading access because universities shape what students can study and consult in those institutions. They do not, by themselves, establish the condition of school libraries, community collections, or public libraries across Afghanistan.
What alternatives are available—and what they cannot replace
UNESCO reported in August 2025 that community-based literacy courses had reached 57,000 young people in more than 2,600 villages, with over 1,000 community-based facilitators trained. Most of the young people reached were girls. UNESCO also reported support for educational media with an estimated audience of 17 million Afghans. These are programme-reach and estimated-audience figures, not counts of regular readers or students receiving an equivalent to full-time schooling.
UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay cautioned in the same 2025 statement: “However, these alternative learning methods — which cannot replace classroom education — are themselves constantly threatened by the de facto authorities.” The distinction matters: literacy initiatives may help people continue learning, but the reported scale does not show that they can make up for exclusion from formal education.
Community book programmes before the takeover
The UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning’s description of the ACKU Box Library Extension records an earlier model for getting locally developed and market-purchased reading materials to newly low-literate Afghans, particularly marginalized women, children, and internally displaced people. Selected schools and community centres could receive books and box-library extensions. The programme description says established libraries could receive up to 500 books plus a box-library extension or bookshelves; sites without a library could receive a box or shelves holding around 360 books.
This is historical programme context, not evidence that the same provision is currently operating or that these materials remain available at those sites. It illustrates one way schools and community centres could serve as access points for reading, while leaving their post-2021 condition unestablished.
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What the numbers do—and do not—say about reading
UNESCO’s 2025 situation report cites 93% as the latest official learning-poverty estimate, from 2021. Learning poverty is the share of 10-year-olds unable to read and understand a simple text. UNESCO says no updated official estimate was available for 2025, so 93% is not a 2025 or 2026 reading measurement. The report warns of further deterioration, but that concern is not a new official estimate.
Afghanistan’s earlier education gains show what is at stake without supplying a current measure of reading habits. UNESCO’s 2023 explainer says total education enrollment rose from around 1 million in 2001 to around 10 million in 2018. It also says an earlier UNESCO literacy programme reached more than 600,000 youth and adults, 60% of them women. Those are historical totals, not current participation figures.
What is known about public libraries
The evidence cited here does not provide a current nationwide inventory of public libraries, their opening hours, collections, visits, or post-2021 changes. Nor does it provide a representative survey of Afghan readers’ habits. That means it is not possible to describe a single nationwide pattern of public-library closures, censorship, or access from these sources.
The evidence supports a more bounded conclusion: restrictions on girls’ and women’s education narrow access to formal learning and the reading routines it supports; there are documented directives concerning private university library books and university learning materials; and literacy and educational-media programmes offer limited alternatives. Public libraries remain a distinct question for which the available evidence does not establish a nationwide answer.
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