ISLAMABAD: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said she was "overwhelmed” to be back in her native Pakistan on Saturday, as she attended a summit on girls’ education in the Islamic world that has been snubbed by Afghanistan’s Taleban government.
The summit has brought together education leaders from Muslim-majority countries, but without Afghanistan—the only country in the world where girls are banned from school. "The Muslim world including Pakistan faces significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to education for girls,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said at the opening of the summit in the capital Islamabad.
"Denying education to girls is tantamount to denying their voice and their choice, while depriving them of their right to a bright future.” Pakistan Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP that Islamabad had extended an invitation to Kabul, "but no-one from the Afghan government was at the conference”.
Muhammad al-Issa, a Saudi cleric and secretary general of the Muslim World League—which has backed the summit—said religion was no grounds for blocking girls from school. "The entire Muslim world has agreed that girls education is important, and those who say that girls education is un-Islamic are wrong,” he said. Yousafzai, who was shot by Pakistan Taleban militants in 2012 when she was a schoolgirl, is due to address the conference on Sunday.
"I’m truly honored, overwhelmed and happy to be back in Pakistan,” she told AFP as she arrived at the conference with her parents. On Friday, she posted on social media that she would speak about "why leaders must hold the Taleban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women & girls”. Since returning to power in 2021, the Afghan Taleban government has imposed an austere version of Islamic law that the United Nations has called "gender apartheid”.
‘Good initiative’
Pakistan is facing its own severe education crisis, with more than 26 million children out of school, according to government figures, one of the highest numbers in the world. Sharif said "inadequate infrastructure, safety concerns, as well as deeply entrenched societal norms” were barriers to girls education.
Zahra Tariq, a 23-year-old studying clinical psychology who attended the opening of the summit, told AFP: "At last we have a good initiative on Muslim girls’ education,” said "Those in rural areas are still facing problems. In some cases their families are the first barrier.”
Yousafzai became a household name after she was attacked by Pakistan Taleban militants on a school bus in the remote Swat valley in 2012. Militancy was widespread in the region at the time as the war between the Afghan Taleban and NATO forces raged across the border in Afghanistan.
The Pakistan and Afghan Taleban are separate groups but share close links and similar ideologies, including a strong disbelief in educating girls. Yousafzai was evacuated to the United Kingdom after her attack and went on to become a global advocate for girls’ education and, at the age of 17, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. — AFP