The UN special envoy for global education on Tuesday urged major Muslim countries to send a delegation of clerics to Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar, the home of IEA supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, to make the case that bans on women’s education and employment have “no basis in the Quran or the Islamic religion”.

Gordon Brown told a virtual UN press conference on the second anniversary of the IEA takeover of Afghanistan that the International Criminal Court should prosecute IEA leaders for a crime against humanity for denying education and employment to Afghan girls and women, the Associated Press reported.

The former British prime minister said he has sent a legal opinion to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan that shows the denial of education and employment is “gender discrimination, which should count as a crime against humanity, and it should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.”

He said he believes “there’s a split within the regime,” with many people in the education ministry and around the government in the capital, Kabul, who want to see the rights of girls to education restored. “And I believe that the clerics in Kandahar have stood firmly against that, and indeed continue to issue instructions.”

AP reported that the IEA’s chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, brushed aside questions about restrictions on girls and women in an interview late Monday in Kabul, saying the status quo will remain. He also said the IEA viewed their rule of Afghanistan as open-ended, drawing legitimacy from Islamic law and facing no significant threat.

Brown said the IEA should be told that if girls are allowed to go to secondary school and university again, education aid to Afghanistan, which was cut after the bans were announced, will be restored.

He also called for monitoring and reporting on abuses and violations of the rights of women and girls, sanctions against those directly responsible for the bans including by the United States and United Kingdom, and the release of those imprisoned for defending women’s and girls’ rights.

He announced that the UN and other organizations will sponsor and fund internet learning for girls and support underground schools as well as education for Afghan girls forced to leave the country who need help to go to school.

“The international community must show that education can get through to the people of Afghanistan, in spite of the Afghan government’s bans,” he said.

Brown said there are a number of organizations supporting underground schools and there is a new initiative in the last few weeks to provide curriculum through mobile phones, which are popular in Afghanistan.

During the 20 years the Taliban were out of power, Brown said six million girls got an education, becoming doctors, lawyers, judges, members of parliament and cabinet ministers.

Today, he said, 2.5 million girls are being denied education, and three million more will leave primary school in the next few years, “so we’re losing the talents of a whole generation.”

Brown urged global action and pressure — not just words — to convince the IEA to restore the rights of women and girls.

“We have not done enough in the last two years,” he said. “I don’t want another year to go by when girls in Afghanistan and women there feel that they are powerless because we have not done enough to support them.”