‘I speak for those without a voice’
Taliban victim issues moving call for children’s education
MALALA Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban last year for demanding education for girls, marked her 16th birthday with a passionate speech at the UN in which she said education could change the world.
Tears were brushed away and spontaneous applause rippled through the UN as she delivered her historic speech.
“Let us pick up our books and pens,” said the teenager. “They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution.”
Yousafzai, who has been recovering in the UK, delivered her address in New York in front of UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to an auditorium packed with 1 000 students from around the world.
Her parents watched proudly as she assured her audience that she was “the same Malala”.
Wearing a loose-fitting pink shawl that had belonged to assassinated former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, she said: “I am not against anyone. Nor am I here to speak against the Taliban or any other ter- rorist group. I am here to speak up for the right to education of every child.”
It was a typically impressive performance by a teenager who earned the enmity of the Taliban in her home country for campaigning for the right of girls to go to school.
She said she was speaking for human rights activists across the world.
“Here I stand not as one voice, but speaking for those who have fought for the right to be treated with dignity, their right for equality of opportunity and their right to be educated,” she said.
She called on governments to fight for the rights of women and children deprived of an education by child labour and forced marriages at early ages.
“The extremists were afraid of education,” she said. “That is why they’re blasting schools every day — because they’re afraid of progress, afraid of change.
“If we want to achieve our goals, let us empower ourselves with a weapon of knowledge and shield ourselves with unity and togetherness.”
During a series of standing ovations, she said the attempt on her life had made her only more resolute.
“Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, courage and fervour was born,” she said. “I speak not for myself, but for those without a voice.”
Unable to safely return to Pakistan, she started at a school in Birmingham in March after medical treatment there during which doctors mended parts of her skull with a titanium plate.
The event, designated by the world body as Malala Day, was organised by Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister who is now the UN special envoy for global education.
He said that the gathering was not just a celebration of Yousafzai’s birthday and her recovery, but of her “dream that nothing — no political indifference, no government inaction, no intimidation, no threats, no assassin’s bullets — should ever deny the right of every single child . . . to be able to go to school”.
Calling for “a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism”, Yousafzai presented Ban with a petition in support of 57 million children who are not able to go to school around the world.
The UN cultural agency Unesco and Save the Children released a special report, Children Battling to Go to School, ahead of Yousafzai’s speech.
Pakistan has five million children out of school, a number only surpassed by Nigeria, where the figure is 10 million, the report said. Most of those are girls. — ©