Malala Yousafzai speaks before the United Nations Youth Assembly July 12, 2013 at UN headquarters in New York |
Editor's note: Gordon Brown is a United
Nations Special Envoy on Global Education. He was formerly the UK's prime
minister.
The Taliban is now on the defensive after
admitting that their attempt to assassinate Malala Yousafzai has been
counterproductive.
It is a remarkable twist of history that it has
taken the courage of a wounded 16-year-old girl to force an entire army of
terrorists -- with all their guns, bombs and grenades -- onto the back foot.
Reeling from adverse comment worldwide,
Adnan Rasheed, the Taliban commander who spoke out on Wednesday, tried to
suggest that all that the Taliban opposes is western education. But in trying
to extricate the Taliban from the charge that they oppose girls' schooling full
stop, his comments reveal that the only education they favour is indoctrination
and the only form of government they embrace theocratic.
Rasheed's protestations are at odds with
the reality of 1,000 closed schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan because of
arson attacks - and threats of the same. Indeed schools have been shut hundreds
of miles from any Pakistani army presence, undermining the claim that only
schools used as army bases are attacked.
In the last few weeks alone, 14 young
women were blown up when the bus carrying them from college was firebombed; a
school principal was shot dead and his pupils maimed in broad daylight at a
prize giving ceremony held in the playground of an all-girls school in Karachi;
and a teacher was gunned down in front of her son as she drove to teach at
another female college.
These atrocities testify to the continued
war against education. Not a word the Taliban utter about the right of girls
like Malala to go to school will be believed until they stop bombing schools,
killing teachers and massacring girls.
Gordon Brown |
But Malala has shown it is possible to stand up
to Taliban intimidation and, emboldened by her courage, two million Pakistanis
have signed petitions supporting the right of girls to go to school, part of
four million signatures worldwide. This includes a million signatures from
out-of-school girls and boys in Pakistan, who supported -- in some cases by
putting thumb marks on the petition -- a plea for universal education delivered
to the Pakistani President and Secretary-General of the UN.
As I found when I visited Pakistan only a few
months ago, the silent majority is prepared to be silent no more.
With girls
openly wearing 'I am Malala' headbands and t-shirts and identifying with
Malala's demands, they are defying Taliban threats - and Pakistan cannot ever
be the same again.
A modern civil rights struggle is now underway,
led by young people and influenced by online information about what is
happening in other countries. Young people are insistent that education is a
universal right, demanding that all the barriers that stand in the way -- child
labour, child marriage, child trafficking and blanket discrimination against
girls -- are pushed aside.
The recent revelations of both Taliban weakness
and the strength of public opinion for education should signal much more than a
set of petitions: it should be the start of a determined Pakistani effort to
speed up the delivery of education to every girl and every boy. Pakistan cannot
achieve its full potential until girls and boys are educated, for employment
and for citizenship.
Today there are at least seven million girls and
boys out of school in Pakistan -- and most girls will never complete their
education. Even in 2050, only one in five young adults will have had the chance
of college or university on current trends.
Illiteracy, especially among girls, will hold
Pakistan's development back for decades unless something is done. China,
Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and even Bangladesh will enrol millions of students at
college and university -- but while Pakistan's population will grow to 300 or
perhaps 400 million, making it one of the world's most populated countries, it
will remain in the dark ages for education.
We also know that young people denied
opportunity fall prey to extremist propaganda. This is yet another reason why a
new Pakistani national education plan is required, involving all NGOs, and,
while recognising that education is a devolved not federal matter in Pakistan,
a national consensus on doubling investment in schools is now urgently needed.
In the last few months, we have been working
with the government, civil society organisations, UN sister organisations and
donor governments to draw up proposals to expand education, to get girls in
particular to school, and to help the provinces where education attendance is
lowest. This includes Malala's home of KPK, where 700,000 children are not at
school, 600,000 of them girls.
We will discuss these proposals at a summit
meeting between the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nawaz Sharif in
September when the new Pakistani Prime Minister visits New York. And I will
visit Pakistan to meet civil society organisations to assess the role they can
play in improving educational opportunities for the left-out millions.
The good news is that we need no scientific
invention or technological breakthrough to deliver education for all: we need
instead the same willpower to move mountains that Malala showed when she stood
up to the Taliban and lit the fuse that could inspire a modern educational
revolution.
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