In this Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, photo, Afghan refugees and internally displaced Pakistani school children attend their classes at a makeshift school on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP)

Taliban authorities have detained the founder of a project that campaigned for girls' education in Kabul, his brother and the UN said on Tuesday.

Girls were barred from attending secondary school last year by the Taliban government, making Afghanistan the only country in the world where there is a ban on education.

The UN mission in Afghanistan tweeted "Matiullah Wesa, head of PenPath and advocate for girls' education, was arrested in Kabul Monday."

Wesa's brother confirmed that he was arrested outside a mosque after prayers on Monday evening. "Matiullah had finished his prayers and came out of the mosque when he was stopped by some men in two vehicles," Samiullah Wesa told AFP.

"When Matiullah asked for their identity cards, they beat him and forcefully took him away."

Matiullah founded campaigns for schools and distributes books in rural areas, and has long dedicated himself to communicating the importance of girls' education to village elders.

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Since the ban on secondary schools for girls, Wesa has continued visiting remote areas to drum up support from locals. "We are counting hours, mins, and seconds for the opening of girls' schools. The damage that closure of schools causes is irreversible and undeniable," he tweeted last week as the new school year started in Afghanistan.

"We held meetings with locals and we will continue our protest if the schools remain closed."

Men, women, elderly, young, everyone from every corner of the country are asking for the Islamic rights to education for their daughters. Penpath female volunteers calls for girls education and their rights to education #PenPathGirlsEduCampaign #PenPathGirlsEduCampaign pic.twitter.com/gekG7fsGKj
— Matiullah Wesa مطيع الله ويسا (@matiullahwesa) March 26, 2023

After banning women from university, the Taliban have repeatedly claimed they will reopen schools for girls once certain conditions have been met. They say they lack the funds and time to remodel the syllabus along Islamic lines.

The Taliban made similar assurances during their first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, but girls' schools never opened in five years.

It is worth noting that in deeply conservative Afghanistan, attitudes to girls' education have been slowly changing in rural areas, where the advantages are being recognized.