A thousand days have passed since the Taliban stopped Afghan girls from attending secondary school. UN agencies say their lives and futures are being damaged.

UNICEF released a statement marking what it called "a sad and sobering milestone." It points out 1,000 days of education loss adds up to 3 billion learning hours for Afghan girls. It says their exclusion from classrooms is a "blatant violation" of their right to education, as well as harming their mental health.

Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Office said the Taliban have told female civil servants -- who are already barred from going to work -- their pay will be cut to the minimum.

A spokesperson, Liz Throssell, said the move, along with the education ban, is "entrenching the exclusion of women from public life." She said Taliban's "discriminatory and profoundly arbitrary decision" is further eroding human rights and limiting women's freedom of movement.

Some 1.5 million Afghan girls have been kept out of secondary school after the Taliban regained power in August 2021. There's no sign the Islamic group plans to let them back in anytime soon.