ISLAMABAD: Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai on Sunday said she would continue to call out the Zionist entity’s violations of international law and human rights in Gaza. The education advocate was speaking at a global summit on girls’ education in Muslim nations hosted by Pakistan and attended by representatives from dozens of countries.

“In Gaza, (the Zionist entity) has decimated the entire education system,” she said in an address to the conference. “They have bombed all universities, destroyed more than 90 percent of schools, and indiscriminately attacked civilians sheltering in school buildings. “I will continue to call out (the Zionist entity’s) violations of international law and human rights.”

Yousafzai was shot when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl by Pakistani militants enraged by her education activism. She made a remarkable recovery after being evacuated to the United Kingdom and went on to become the youngest ever Nobel Prize winner at the age of 17. “Palestinian children have lost their lives and future. A Palestinian girl cannot have the future she deserves if her school is bombed and her family is killed,” she added.

Yousafzai also urged Muslim leaders not to legitimize the Afghan Taleban government and to “show true leadership” over their assault on women’s rights. “Do not legitimize them,” she said at the summit. “As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voices, use your power. You can show true leadership. You can show true Islam,” said 27-year-old Yousafzai.

The two-day conference has brought together ministers and education officials from dozens of Muslim-majority countries, backed by the Muslim World League (MWL). Since sweeping back to power in 2021, the Taleban government has imposed an austere version of Islamic law that the United Nations has labeled “gender apartheid”.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from secondary school and university. Delegates from Afghanistan’s Taleban government did not attend the event despite being invited, Pakistan Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP on Saturday. “Simply put, the Taleban do not see women as human beings,” Yousafzai told the conference. “They cloak their crimes in cultural and religious justification.”

Muhammad Al-Issa, a Saudi cleric and MWL secretary general, on Saturday told the summit that “those who say that girls’ education is un-Islamic are wrong”. Yousafzai also highlighted the impact of wars in Yemen, Sudan and Gaza on schooling. “In Gaza, (Zionist entity) has decimated the entire education system,” she said. “I will continue to call out (Zionists) violations of international law and human rights.”

Taleban engagement

Pakistan’s state PTV channel censored a portion of her speech which alluded to a mass deportation scheme by Islamabad launched in 2023 that has seen hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals leave under threat of arrest. “I cannot imagine an Afghan girl or an Afghan woman being forced back into the system that denies her future,” she told the conference in remarks cut from the air.

While there is outcry in much of the international community over the Taleban government curbs, nations are divided over how to engage with Kabul’s rulers on the issue. Some countries argue they should be frozen out of the diplomatic community until they backtrack, while others prefer engagement to coax them into a U-turn. No country has officially recognized the Taleban authorities, but several regional governments have engaged on the topics of trade and security.

There is little evidence that broadsides from the international community over the Taleban government’s treatment of women are having any impact on their position. Yousafzai’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai, who pushed against cultural norms for his daughter to go to school in Pakistan and co-founded her Malala Fund charity, on Saturday told AFP he had not seen “any serious step or serious action from the Muslim world” on the cause of girls’ education in Afghanistan.

Roza Otunbayeva — head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan — said leaders of Islamic countries should offer direct help to Afghan girls. “I really call on all these ministers... who came from all over the world, to offer scholarships, to have online education, to have all sorts of education for them,” she told a panel. – AFP