Representatives from around 40 countries and activists, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, gathered in Pakistan on Saturday for a two-day summit on girls’ education in Muslim communities, ignored by the Taliban Afghans.
The summit, being held in the capital Islamabad, was inaugurated by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and brings together ministers and ambassadors from 44 countries, as well as religious dignitaries and representatives of the United Nations and the World Bank.
“The Muslim world, including Pakistan, faces great challenges when it comes to ensuring equitable access to education for girls,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said at the opening of the summit, supported by the Islamic World League.
“Denying education to girls amounts to rejecting their voices and choices, while depriving them of the right to have a bright future,” he said.
Afghanistan, Pakistan’s neighboring country, was invited to the summit, but no Taliban representative is participating, Pakistani Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP.
“Only a few Afghans working for international organizations” are present, he said.
Asked by AFP, Afghan officials did not wish to comment immediately.
Afghanistan is, since the return to power of the Taliban in 2021, the only country in the world where girls and women do not have the right to go to secondary school or university.
The UN denounces “gender apartheid”, which the Taliban government defends, which affirms that Islamic law “guarantees” the rights of men and women in the country.
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for the right to education invited to Islamabad, has already indicated that she will emphasize the fate of girls in Afghanistan during a speech on Sunday.
-“I will talk about the rights that need to be protected so that all girls can go to school and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for crimes committed against women and girls,” she wrote on X Friday.
– 26 million Pakistanis out of school –
The young woman, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, was attacked in 2012 by Pakistani Taliban on a school bus in the isolated Swat Valley, near the border with Afghanistan.
She has only returned to Pakistan a few times since her evacuation 12 years ago to the United Kingdom, where she now lives, and said she was “moved and happy” to be back on Saturday.
Tens of millions of girls are out of school in Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh and Nigeria.
Pakistan itself faces a serious education crisis, with more than 26 million children out of school, mainly due to poverty, one of the highest rates in the world, according to official figures of the government.
Besides foreign representatives, Pakistani schoolgirls and students are attending the summit.
“At least a good initiative in favor of the education of Muslim girls,” said Zahra Tariq, a clinical psychology student.
“Those who are in rural areas still face problems,” she stressed, however. “In some cases, it is families who are the first obstacles (to schooling).”
