On this International Women’s Day, I want to highlight the transformative power of education in the lives of women and girls. Education is not just one right among many — it is the foundation that makes all other rights possible.
I think of a young Afghan woman who graduated in Urban Planning in Portugal and recently had the opportunity to contribute to an international urban design workshop in Doha, where she worked on heritage-sensitive planning and is now seeking opportunities to deepen her experience in smart and sustainable cities. I think of another Afghan student who is completing her Master’s degree in Psychology and hopes to create an online mental-health platform for Afghans, by Afghans, bringing culturally sensitive support to people who have lived through years of conflict and displacement. I think of another who completed a Master’s in Pure Mathematics, and of many others studying computer science, imagining the future they want to help build. All of them studied in Portugal.
Their journeys remind us that when women are given the chance to learn, they do not only transform their own lives — they contribute knowledge, solutions, and hope to their communities and to the world.
But these young Afghan women are not alone. Across many crisis and conflict settings, girls are often the first victims of instability — their schools closed, their futures suspended, their rights crushed. And beyond conflict zones, countless women and girls from underprivileged backgrounds continue to fight every day against inequality and exclusion simply to access education and opportunity. According to the United Nations, the line of progress on women’s rights is no longer steadily advancing — in too many places, it is slowing, stalling, or even breaking.
This is why we must do more. Around the world, too many girls are still denied the right to learn. Yet like these young women, many others who come from contexts where their rights were ignored or denied refuse to give up. Their determination reminds us of our responsibility: to protect the right to education, to expand opportunities, and to keep hope alive — because when a girl learns, the future opens for us all.
As we mark International Women’s Day 2026 under the UN theme “Rights. Justice. Action. For all women and girls.”, let this be our commitment: to turn principles into progress, to defend rights where they are threatened, and to act — together — so that every woman and every girl can learn, thrive, and shape the future.
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Because when women learn, the world moves forward.
