Oslo, July 7: As the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Pakistani rights activist Malala Yousafzai is all set to celebrate her 18th birthday on Sunday, July 12, the fearless girl on Monday called on world leaders to choose books over bullets and give every girl 12 years of free education. Our leaders are choosing bombs and bullets over books and bright futures.
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Speaking tomorrow at the summit, Malala will urge leaders to invest an additional $39 billion annually to make this promise a reality.
To guarantee 12 years of universal free education will cost an estimated $ 340 billion per year till 2020.
“Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly” – Malala shows her medal during the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony in Oslo previous year She highlighted the “brave” attempts at providing education for all in 2000 with the Millennium Development Goals, but condemned the lack of girls who were kept in education past primary school levels.
At the summit, Erna Solberg, Norwegian prime minister, announced that Chile, Indonesia, Malawi and Norway along with the head of the United Nations agency UNESCO have launched an worldwide commission on improving funding for education. “Key areas included ensuring the education of girls, the quality of learning and teaching, and education in emergencies”, she said.
Describing children as the “seeds of future progress”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that education is the “the soil to help them grow into global citizens”.
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In a paper published for the Oslo Education Summit, the Malala Fund presents clear recommendations for governments to finance full primary and secondary education for all children by 2030. According to reports over the years, as many as 58 million children don’t go to school.
