Islamic countries gathered in Islamabad. Nobel Peace Prize 2014 ‘excited’
In Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, the global summit of Muslim majority countries on the education of girls in the Islamic world opened: an event which boasts the participation of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, but which was snubbed by the Taliban, who in Afghanistan – the only country in the world – they have prohibited women from school and they have declined their participation.
It was the Pakistani Taliban who attempted to kill the then 15-year-old Pakistani girl’s rights activist Malala in 2012, who was saved from a bullet to the head in Great Britain, was awarded the Nobel Prize two years later, and has lived in exile ever since and became the witness of the fight for women’s right to education. The girl, present in Islamabad and scheduled for surgery tomorrow, admitted today that she was “overwhelmed” with emotion at having returned to her native country.
“The Muslim world, including Pakistan, faces significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to education for girls,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said at the opening of the summit, supported by the Muslim World League. “Denying girls an education is denying their voice and choice, depriving them of their right to a bright future.”
Pakistan’s education minister, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, told AFP that the government “had extended the invitation to Afghanistan, but no one from the Afghan (Taliban) government is present at the conference.”
“I am truly honoured, overwhelmed and happy to be back in Pakistan,” Malala, now 27, told AFP upon arriving in Islamabad with her parents. Last Friday he wrote on social media that he would speak about “why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women and girls.”
