Last October Shazia was
travelling home from school with her friend Malala Yousafzai when a
Taliban gunman boarded their bus and shot both of them. Malala suffered
head and facial injuries and had to be rushed to hospital in the UK.
Shot in the neck and arm, Shazia spent a month in hospital while her
deep wounds healed. Both were attacked by terrorists who wanted to stop
girls going to school.
Shazia dreams of being a
doctor. Fighting back from her injuries, she attempted to resume her
schooling at home in the Swat Valley. So keen was she to return to
school at the earliest opportunity that she ignored continuing threats
to her life from the same Taliban terrorists who shot her and Malala.
Gordon Brown
For months she has had to
be escorted to school each day by two armed guards. Her home has had to
be protected by police. Sadly, the more that Shazia spoke up, the more
the threats escalated, making it difficult for her and her family to
remain secure.
And in the past few weeks
violence has escalated across Pakistan. A female teacher was gunned
down in front of her young son as she drove into her all girls' schools.
A school principal was killed and his pupils severely injured when a
bomb was thrown into a school playground in an all-girls school in
Karachi just as a prize giving ceremony began.
Only ten days ago, in a
massacre which will long be remembered as the single worst terrorist
assault on girls' education in recent years, the bus in which 40 female
students were travelling from their all-girls college campus in Quetta
was blown up by a suicide bomber. 14 girls were killed. So violent was
the terrorist attack that another group followed the injured girls to
hospital and opened fire on them again.
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Despite the public
revulsion against the violence, the attacks have continued. Only this
weekend two schools were blown up, while another two girls were murdered
for posting a video in which they were filmed dancing in the rain.
It is because of events
like these that, with her family's support, Shazia feels forced to leave
the country if she is to have the education she needs. Tomorrow she
will resume her schooling in the UK after being flown over to Birmingham
last weekend and reunited with her lifelong friend Malala.
I first spoke to Shazia
last November, a month after the attempted assassination. She told me
then of her determination to persevere and to speak up for a girl's
right to education. She called education the light that brightens up
girls' lives. And when I met her off the plane from Islamabad on
Saturday night, she told me that she wanted every girl to have the
chance of an education. Her dream, she said, was to build schools so
that every out-of-school girl could develop their talents and fulfil
their potential.
According to UNESCO,
700,000 school-age children in Malala and Shazia's home province of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) are not at school today - and 600,000 are
girls. They are some of the 32 million girls worldwide
denied a place at school. In total, 500 million girls of school age
will never complete their education. This makes the battle for education
for every girl the civil rights struggle of our generation. And until
we provide both the resources and security for girls to travel to school
and feel safe from the Taliban, then many of Pakistan's schools will
remain closed.
The biggest force for
change today is the courage of Malala and now Shazia and girls like
them, who are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their subjugation. It
is their courage that we will celebrate when at the United Nations on
July 12th, the day of Malala's sixteenth birthday, we will hold Malala
Day. A youth resolution will be passed demanding that world leaders
provide the resources to get every child to school.
Now with a new petition launched by Malala on A World at School,
young people themselves from around the world are becoming more
vociferous in fighting for their right to education than the adults who
for centuries have been charged with delivering it.
Go not just to Pakistan,
where I met many of the million-strong Malala demonstrators demanding a
girl's right to school. Travel to Bangladesh and you'll find girls who
have created 'child marriage free zones', preventing themselves being
kept from school in a loveless marriage they did not choose. Visit
Nepal, where girls are fighting child slavery with the Common Forum for
Kalmal Hari Freedom. Attend the marches in India led by child labourers,
demanding not just an end to this form of slavery, but the delivery of
their right to learn.
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We saw how in the wake
of the attack on Malala and Shazia, over three million people --
including a million out-of-school Pakistani children -- signed petitions
calling for children to be able to go to school. This powerful movement
is supported by international campaigns such as Plan's Because I am a Girl and Girls not Brides, started by Nelson Mandela's The Elders group.
As we shift from the
20th century movement of women's emancipation to the 21st century
campaign for women's empowerment, girls sense that the future is theirs.
And it is this new liberation movement, led by girls, that we will
celebrate in ten days' time when Malala addresses the United Nations.
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