LONDON, March 12 (APP): Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi told a packed hall of overseas Pakistanis in London that education was a great challenge in Pakistan but it was also an
opportunity.
Speaking at the Annual Gala Dinner celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the UK chapter of DIL (Developments in Literacy) a non-profit body that is educating thousands of underprivileged children, she said the right to education was enshrined in the country’s Constitution but that provision awaited to be fully implemented, according to a press release.
Girls, she said, still did not have equal access to education, which
was a constitutional obligation and equally an obligation of “our faith and our spiritual traditions”.
The event titled, Unlocking the Future of Our Stars, was organized by The Trustees and Benefit Committee of DIL at the prestigious venue of
Madame Tussauds museum.
Ambassador Lodhi said the role of women was stressed in the clearest
of terms by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He famously said, that “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless its women are side by side with men.”
This, she said, was reason enough to fight for girls’ education.
“To campaign for education for every girl was to fight for the country’s future,” she said and added that the country could not move forward if
half its population was held back.
She said there was no shortage of hunger for knowledge and education
for girls by their parents. “Parents and daughters, all across the
country, are desperate to empower themselves, their families and their communities by the light of education. Parents and their girls walk for miles to get to a school. They brave poor teachers. They brave the
extreme cold and the extreme heat. They will go to any lengths to get
access to a schoo,” she added.
As for the least privileged parents and girls, Ambassador Lodhi
said they had shown over and over again that they walk the talk and
that they had taken bullets for their right to be educated.
Ambassador Lodhi told the audience that this was epitomized by Pakistan’s Nobel Peace Laureate, Malala Yusufzai, who exposed the moral crisis of girls’ education.
“She took a bullet as a symbol of the non-negotiable right to
education and sent the most powerful signal that this is an urgent need
for every girl and for all times.”
The Pakistani envoy praised the government of Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif for making progress in this regard as the latest
statistics showed that the number of out of school children had fallen
by three million in the past three years.
Another step taken by the government that inspired hope was that
in January this year the Prime Minister took a pledge to give math and science education the attention it clearly merits. “The case of
educating girls due to the returns received was also emphasized,” she
added.
Ambassador Lodhi said the challenge was a big one and of course
much more needed to be done especially as 22 million children of
school going age still did not have access to a school.
She paid rich tribute to the pioneers and supporters of DIL whom
she described as “being ahead of the game” by taking education to the
most marginalized children and youth and training local teachers to
build community resilience.
DIL and similar non-profits should pat themselves on the back,
she said, for inspiring conversations around education, including in
the media, conversations that have helped to keep the issue high on the public agenda.
