Nigerian army releases children held on terror suspicions

Forced marriage is illegal in Burkina Faso, but remains common and often involves girls under 18. A shelter in the city of Kaya offers an escape for girls keen to continue their education

Nigeria is striving to reintegrate former Boko Haram terrorists who have voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered to the authorities. But in many communities, resentment towards the ex-fighters is still strong.

The Taliban has sparked outrage and concern among rights groups, after it reversed stance and closed secondary schools for girls across Afghanistan. Thousands of young students were sent home, confused and worried about their future.

GirlZOffMute's Angel Onyi Unigwe, a well-known child actress in Nigeria, has been figuring out who is bullying girls in schools. Some teen girls from various schools in Lagos blame boys and teachers. They told her that bullying had affected their self-esteem. Have you ever been bullied, and if so, how did you manage it?

Afghanistan is heading back to the pre-2001 dark days of the Taliban, and Western powers were naive if they ever thought this wouldn't be the case. That's the view of Heather Barr, associate women's rights director at Human Rights Watch. As women are told to cover their faces in public again and female television presenters are told to do the same, she spoke to us on Perspective about the how the Taliban are rolling back women's rights and what, if anything, the West can do about it. "Life has become a prison for most women and girls," she told us.

For more than nine months, Afghan girls over the age of 11 have been prohibited from going to high school. The Taliban have not reneged on the ban they imposed on taking power last August, despite their initial promise to do so. In the western city of Herat, FRANCE 24's reporters followed one teacher who hopes that her former students will be able to continue their education. They also met a teacher who is defying the ban by giving clandestine lessons. Meanwhile, some fathers are trying to convince the authorities to reopen girls' schools for their daughters.

Around 300 inmates remained at large on Wednesday (July 6) after a suspected raid by Islamist Boko Haram militants on a prison in Nigeria's capital Abuja on Tuesday (July 5) night, an interior ministry official said. Shuaib Belgore, permanent secretary at the interior ministry, told journalists outside the 900-inmate prison that a security officer was killed during the raid and three others were injured.

Despite repeated calls on the Taliban to allow girls to attend classes again, the group still has yet to answer. Netizens have taken to the web under the #LetAfghanGirlsLearn campaign to demand back the right to study.

A community group in rural Zimbabwe is making reusable sanitary towels so that girls don't have to miss school when they have their period. The Chiedza Community Welfare Trust, in Zimbabwe's Mutasa District, started sewing cloth sanitary pads when founder Gladys Mukaratirwa realized that local girls were missing school every month because they couldn't afford disposable hygiene products.

Twenty-year-old Mitchell Chivare hurriedly packs the kit, as she readies for the bat and ball game at a nearby school.

More than 850,000 Afghan girls are not allowed to attend class past 6th grade, making Afghanistan the only country in the world where girls are excluded from secondary education. DW's Sandra Petersmann reports from Kabul.

Since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, most girls have been banned from going to high school. But some women are resisting, like Hamida Aman, founder of Radio Begum.