A Taliban gunman shot her as she made her way home from school in Pakistan. She survived the assassination attempt and is now recovering at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital hospital in the UK. Today, Malala Yousafzai has become the symbol for every girl child’s birthright to education.
And yesterday, November 10, the world celebrated Malala. We designated it “Malala and the 32 million girls day”.
United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former British prime minister, Gordon Brown, presented Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari with a million-signature petition urging him to make education available to all children. The latest Unesco figures show that 61 million children worldwide aren’t in school. 32 million of them are girls. And Pakistan has the second largest number of girls out of school in the world.
Malala tells us:
I don’t mind if I’ve to sit on the floor. All I want is education. And I am afraid of no one.
These children discriminated against, marginalized and exploited. This is our collective shame. We’re called upon to act. Please click here to add your voice to millions around the world calling on governments and international organizations to ensure that these children have access to education by the end of 2015.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons