Pakistan and the rest of the international community have embarked on an ambitious mission to educate all girls by 2015 – and the fund for the grand endeavour has been named after none other than Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by Taliban gunmen for campaigning for girls’ education in Swat.
Set up on the eve of International Human Rights Day, the “Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education” aims at raising billions of dollars to ensure that all girls go to school by 2015 in line with United Nations Millennium goals.
The fund was launched at the high-profile “Stand Up For Malala” event at United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) headquarters in Paris on Monday.
Education Minister Waqas Akram signed the agreement with Unesco chief Irina Bokova. The programme will strive to achieve the goals of improving access for girls at all levels of education, improve the quality and relevance of basic education to ensure that educational contents, teaching practices and learning environments are gender-sensitive and eliminate school-related gender-based violence.
President Asif Ali Zardari announced a 10-million-dollar donation for a global war chest for the ambitious endeavour.
The president also addressed the event, which drew French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, former British premier Gordon Brown, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, and the former presidents of Finland and Chile.
“A young determined daughter of my country was attacked by the forces of darkness,” President Zardari said at the event. “We are facing two forces in the country; Malala represents the forces of peace and we are fighting with the forces of darkness, hatred and violence,” he said.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton sent special videotaped messages of support.
The 15-year-old schoolgirl, who is recovering in a Birmingham hospital after being brutally attacked in her school bus on October 9, will herself join the campaign when she is better.
President Zardari slammed Islamic militants for giving the religion a bad name. “The first word of the Holy Quran is ‘Iqra,’ which is ‘read,’” he said. “What extremists fear is a girl with a book in her hand,” he said.
Brown said the initiative, which he hoped would attract “billions of dollars of public subscriptions,” also aimed at stopping social evils such as child marriage and violence against girls.
He said he wanted Malala’s birthday, July 12th, to be designated a day of action each year when children around the world are invited to march, demonstrate, petition and pray for education to be delivered worldwide.
In her message, Clinton highlighted the pressing need for universal education, saying: “Closing the education gap is a powerful prescription for economic growth.”
Ashton said the EU, which on Monday collected this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, said the award’s prize money, an estimated 930,000-euro ($1.2 million), would be donated to help children affected by war.
Thanking Unesco for partnering with the government to hold the event that aims at rallying international support for further promoting the cause of education, President Zardari noted that those nations who have progressed have ensured maximum rights to their citizens and provided universal access to education to their men and women. It is no coincidence that these are all democratic nations, he continued.
President Zardari called for forging a grand alliance of governments, donors, politicians, academics, private and public sectors for promoting the cause of education and to ensure that every child receives quality education.
He called upon the international community to join hands to place a book in every girl’s hand. He said that such a partnership was the way to triumph; a triumph of right over wrong, of light over darkness, of hope over fear.
President Zardari stated that Malala’s survival taught everyone that extremism could best be fought through collective action. “Our resolve,” he said, “to provide education to all, in particular to the millions of out-of-school girls, is the best strategy to defeat extremism.”
While underscoring the sacrifices of the people of Pakistan for the cause of democracy, the president added that the country’s democratic government was about to complete its term for the first time in its history.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2012.
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