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Malala Yousafzai Urges Global Action to Combat Girls’ Education Crisis at International Conference in Islamabad

Islamabad hosted the two-day conference that brought together global experts, and educators to address issues surrounding girls' education in Muslim countries.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has emphasized the urgent need for the international community to address the global crisis of girls’ education.

Speaking at the “International Conference on Girls’ Education in Muslim Communities” on Sunday, in Islamabad, Malala highlighted the critical role that educated women play in fostering a thriving society.

Malala stated, “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”.

Pakistan faces a severe education crisis, with more than 22 million children out of school, according to government figures, one of the highest numbers in the world.

She stressed, “If we don’t tackle this crisis, our society will not thrive as it should,” adding,”We will fail to live up to Islam’s fundamental values of seeking knowledge.”

Addressing the conference, she went on to say, 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 several 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 we 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.”

“The Taliban punish women and girls who dare to break their obscure laws by beating them up, detaining them and harming them,” 27-year-old Yousafzai said.

“Simply put, the Taliban do not see women as human beings,” Yousafzai told the conference. “They cloak their crimes in cultural and religious justification.”

“I’m glad that this conference is taking place here in Pakistan because there is still a tremendous amount of work that is ahead of us so that every Pakistani girl can have access to her education,” she said.

“As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voices, use your power. You can show true leadership. You can show true Islam,” she said.

“While we celebrate our rich [Islamic] history, we must also turn our attention to the present and the urgent crisis of millions of girls who cannot go to school,” she said.

“This is not just happening in small, far-flung communities[…] this is the lived reality of more than 120m girls globally.”

She added that the Muslim World League should begin by recognising the crisis which was holding economies back by hundreds of billions in lost growth.

“If we do not tackle this crisis […] we will fail to live up to Islam’s fundamental values of seeking knowledge,” she said.

“In Afghanistan, an entire generation of girls is being robbed of their future,” she said.

“The Taliban have ripped away the right to learn from every Afghan girl […] they want to eliminate women and girls from every aspect of public life and erase them from society,” Yousufzai said.

Malala Yousafzai also criticized Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, pointing to the humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory.

“In Gaza, Israel has decimated the entire education system,” she said.

“They have bombed all universities, destroyed more than 90% of schools, and indiscriminately attacked civilians sheltering in school buildings,” she added.

“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 said.

Islamabad hosted the two-day conference that brought together global experts, and educators to address issues surrounding girls’ education in Muslim countries.

However, the event was snubbed by Afghanistan’s Taliban government, as 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”.

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