Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what support her Department gives to the Afghan government to promote educational opportunities among women and girls in Afghanistan.

DFID is providing £48 million through its Girls Education Challenge Fund to enable some 180,000 girls in some of the poorest rural and hard to reach areas of Afghanistan to have better access to a quality education.

In addition to this funding the UK supported the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), a World-Bank managed multi-donor fund, a proportion of which is used to support education.

In 2012/13 there were more than 2.5 million Afghan girls attending school compared to virtually no girls at school in 2001.