Teenage activist, Malala Yousafzai, has started a petition calling for the UN to back up its commitment to getting every boy and girl in by school by December 2015. Ms Yousafzai will personally deliver the petition to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon this Friday 12 July.
The petition comes in the wake of bomb blasts that took place in Pakistan last month, killing fourteen school girls who were on their way home after attending classes at Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University.
Ms Yousafzai is using her 16th birthday (12 July) as an opportunity to speak publicly for the first time since she was shot by the Taliban for standing up for hers and other girls’ right to education last October. She is calling on the UN to commit to the second of its Millenium Development Goals which states “Achieve Universal Primary Education” by funding new teachers, schools and books. In addition to the petition, Ms Yousafzai will also present a report with some rather stark findings as outlined by former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in his piece for Reuters “if you are a girl in a developing country, your chances of being denied schooling are one in five (20 percent). If you live in a rural area this probability rises to 23 percent. And if you’re poor, it is even higher, at 31 percent.”
Author: Anna Rees/ RESET editorial
