Women's soccer is taboo in Cape Verde. With a bold initiative, the Maracanã Association promotes social and sports inclusion. Their approach empowers girls from low-income families to make their dreams come true.

Afghanistan has suffered its deadliest attack in a year outside a girls' school in Kabul. At least 50 people died in a bombing, mostly students, and about 100 were injured.

Teenage girls in Kano, a socially conservative Muslim city in northern Nigeria, are learning robotics, computing and other STEM subjects in an innovative project to "open their minds". In a part of the world where many girls are expected to marry young and their education is not prioritised, these girls are being supported in their endeavour to develop skills and independent thinking by their parents and even by a member of the local emir's traditional court

As concern grows internationally about an expected clampdown by the Taliban on women's rights, students at one girls’ school are "happy" to be returning. Schools in Herat faced long closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing security concerns over Taliban advances before insurgents finally captured the city on August 12. The school's director says it reopened on Monday and students are attending class, with more of the girls wearing the hijab and choosing conservative dress than before the Taliban takeover.

Twins Aminata and Ramatoulaye Diaw have impressed Senegal by achieving their baccalaureate at the age of only 13, a new record in the African nation.

The Taliban say they will not stop girls from going to school, but experts say it is hard to trust them. For young girls, who have just started school and had never seen the Taliban, it is a difficult situation.

Vice President Kamala Harris says the US will find new ways to "raise the pressure on Beijing", accusing China of bullying in the hotly disputed Asian waters for the second time in two days. China claims almost all of the resource-rich South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in shipping trade passes annually, with competing claims from four Southeast Asian states including Vietnam. Harris made the comments on a visit to Vietnam to stress US commitment to Asia, a trip critics have slammed as tone-deaf given the parallels with the superpower's evacuations from Saigon and Kabul.

Even though the Taliban's reliance on foreign aid money could moderate their stance toward women, higher education for girls and women in the country still faces many challenges.

With the Taliban now in power for more than 100 days, women and girls in Afghanistan are still waiting to hear officially if they can return to work and school. Also, how do we flip the script when it comes to gender violence and teach men and boys to act appropriately? Annette Young talks to Michael Conroy, the founder of Men at Work, an UK organisation which offers training programs to foster violence-free relationships for men and boys.

A group with alleged ties to the "Islamic State" has "enslaved and sexually abused" hundreds of women and girls in Mozambique over the past three years, Human Rights Watch said.

The recent death of Sylvester Oromoni has brought to the front burner the age-old issue of bullying in Nigerian schools. RonkePosh Adeniyi, a Nigerian educator, shares her experience and how bullying can be managed in schools.⁣ ⁣⁣

Bullying at school, or "ijime", is a persistent problem in Japan. In 2020, there were 612,000 recorded cases at schools across the country – more than three times the number a decade ago. What begins as a joke among friends can end in insults and violence. Bullying leads to academic failure, isolation and, in some cases, suicide. Last year, 80 percent of Japanese schools reported bullying incidents. Our correspondents Louis Belin, Ryusuke Murata, Aruna Popuri and Justin McCurry report from Tokyo.