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This is version 2 of this check, since replaced. See the current check.

Not correct

Not true (2 wrong): The Taliban permanently banned women from school and UN Women stayed…

2 wrong

At a glance

✗ What's wrong

The reel's argument

The Afghan Minister of Education announced a permanent ban on women attending school -> UN Women has stayed completely silent -> International women's organizations ignore women's rights violations by the Taliban

Not correct. Both factual assertions in the post are false. The video is an out-of-context 2024 clip of the Higher Education Minister saying inquiries remain deferred, not a new announcement of a permanent ban. UN Women has consistently condemned the bans since they were imposed.

The claims in detail

✗ Wrong
The Afghan Minister of Education has announced that women will be permanently banned from attending schools.

The video does not show the Minister of Education announcing a permanent ban. The speaker is Neda Mohammad Nadeem, the Taliban's acting Minister of Higher Education, speaking at a press conference on 2024-08-25 in Kabul. Responding to reporters asking when schools and universities would reopen for female students, he stated in Pashto: "Just as education is suspended until further notice [tar amr-e sani], asking about it is also suspended until further notice". The Taliban de facto administration officially maintains that secondary and tertiary education are suspended pending curricular and dress code alignment with Sharia, avoiding declaring a permanent prohibition, even though the ban has operated continuously and indefinitely since 2021 and 2022.

Where this comes from: Press conference footage broadcast by Afghan state media (RTA) and reported by Amu TV and Etilaatroz on 2024-08-25.

✗ Wrong
UN Women has not said a single word.

UN Women has consistently and vocally condemned the Taliban's educational prohibitions. When university education was suspended on 2022-12-20, UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous released an official statement the following day calling the order "an attack on women's rights" and demanding immediate revocation. Bahous repeated these demands before the UN Security Council on 2024-09-18 and 2025-06-24. UN Women's Afghanistan team has also published recurring research alerts, including nationwide surveys showing over 90% public support for girls' schooling, while tracking the 2.4 million girls barred from secondary education.

Where this comes from: UN Women press statements and Security Council briefing records via unwomen.org and UN News.

Sources, and how much they are worth

Sources

Who posted it

@theunmaskinghq

Credibility: not yet established. That takes a check of the account's history, not one post.

Check @theunmaskinghq's credibility

How this was checked

Checked on 20 Oct 2026 by Google's gemini-3.7-flash, an AI model. The reel's video, audio and on-screen text were read directly, and each claim was checked against sources found by live web search. Every paper cited is looked up and rated, and checked for retractions, corrections and expressions of concern (Crossref, which carries the Retraction Watch database) and for published replies and rebuttals that name it (OpenAlex); social posts and blogs are read but never counted as evidence.

Each claim is placed in one of three groups: established -- settled by evidence, or following step by step from well-established science -- not settled by current evidence, or wrong. The reel's argument is judged on its own, because true facts can be strung into a conclusion they do not support.

The headline weighs every claim by how central it is to the reel -- the most significant counts most -- so a reel that is mostly right and wrong on a detail reads as Mostly true, not as False.

AI models improve. This check may be redone with a better one; if a verdict changes, this page says so and the earlier version stays readable.

About this check

Checked 20 Oct 2026 · the original reel by @theunmaskinghq

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