Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai highlighted the global crisis of girls’ education, stressing the need for collective action to ensure that every girl has access to schooling.
“We should begin by recognising what we are up against, a crisis that holds our economy back by hundreds of billions in lost growth, a crisis harming the health, safety and security of our people,” Malala said while speaking on the second day “International Conference on Girls’ Education in Muslim Communities: Challenges and Opportunities” on Sunday.
The federal capital hosted the two-day conference that brought together global experts, educators to address issues surrounding girls’ education in Muslim countries.
Malala stressed “if we don’t tackle this crisis, our society will not thrive as it should”.
“We will fail to live up to Islam’s fundamental values of seeking knowledge.”
This conference, she said, is an encouraging first step. “But we can only have an honest and serious conversation about girls’ educations, if we call out the worst violations of it.”
Malala said that girls in a number of Muslim countries, including Yemen and Sudan, are living under dire circumstances, facing poverty, violence and forced marriages.
“In Afghanistan, an entire generation of girls is robbed of their future. This conference will not be serving its purpose if don’t talk about the education of Afghan girls,” she said, adding, “The Taliban-ruled country is the only one in the world where girls are completely barred from education.”
