TWO DAYS after 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot by a Taleban gunman in revenge for standing up for her right to learn, the UN celebrated the first International Day of the Girl Child.
The event, on October 11, was created to highlight the significance of education to women in many parts of the developing world. While in the West we are inclined to see study as a means to a well-paid job, in parts of Africa and Asia it can represent the difference between a normal childhood and being married off to a man more than four times your age before you’ve even started menstruating.
As part of the awareness-raising campaign, photographer Stephanie Sinclair teamed up with National Geographic to document some of the hundreds of thousands of underage weddings carried out every year in deference to local tradition or in settlement of a debt. In one image, Gulam – 11, the same age Malala was when she started blogging for the BBC Urdu service – sits warily eyeing the 40-year-old man who is about to become her husband. In another, eight-year-old Roshan plays peek-a-boo with the camera, apparently oblivious to the fact she is engaged to a man who could be her great-grandfather. “When girls are able to stay in school and avoid being married early, they can build a foundation for a better life for themselves and their families,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
Malala, from Mingora, in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, was never likely to end up as a child bride. Named after a Pashtun poet and warrior, she was cherished by her father who recognised her intelligence and wanted her to enjoy the same opportunities as her brothers. But she instinctively understood education’s ability to empower. Eager to become a doctor, she valued the daily lessons she received so highly that when the Taleban took control of the region in early 2008, banning education for girls, she was determined to defy them.
Conditioned as we Westerners are to having to push our children off to school, it is awe-inspiring to consider the risks she, and a handful of others, were prepared to take in order to keep up their studies. Aware of the danger, they dressed in plain clothes and hid books under their shawls. In the early days, less than half of Malala’s class turned up for lessons. Then the Taleban closed the girls’ schools down. She was distraught as she watched her hopes for the future fading, but, under the pseudonym Gul Makai, kept on blogging, expressing sadness at the sight of her uniform and geometry box lying idle.
Malala’s attitude ought to shame us. Here in the UK, we take so much for granted. We have compulsory education up to the age of 16, but it doesn’t stop us whingeing. Like spoiled brats, we carp if the playground equipment is a bit shabby or the dinners don’t meet cordon bleu standards. Malala’s requirements were more basic. “I don’t care if I have to sit on the floor at school,” she wrote. “All I want is education. And I am afraid of no-one.”
As Malala continued to share her experiences, fresh military offensives were launched and the Taleban lost control. The schools reopened and Malala – now unmasked and dreaming of becoming a politician – was awarded the country’s first National Peace Award. But the fundamentalists had no intention of letting her rebellion go unanswered. Soon her family was receiving death threats and last week a hitman boarded her school bus and shot her at point blank range in the head and neck. Today, Malala lies critically ill in hospital; as doctors work to save her life, shocking statistics are coming to light. According to Unicef, 67 million primary aged children worldwide don’t attend school. In some parts of Pakistan, only one in five who do attend is a girl and women are two-thirds of the world’s 796 million illiterate population.
Some have mocked the Taleban for being frightened of “a girl with a book”. But the truth is education, particularly the education of women, is a fearsome weapon in the fight against subjugation. A girl who is well-read is less likely to blindly accept the word of priests and mullahs or to meekly submit to her fate. She is better equipped to oppose those who would stop her painting her nails or laughing too loudly. And she is certainly less likely to allow herself to be married off to a man who would seek to stunt her development or deny her freedom.
In a world bereft of feminist icons, Malala is a shining light; she reminds us of the transformative power of learning and of how much extraordinary individuals can achieve through sheer force of personality. But, as the attack has shown, even fighters like Malala need back-up and, though the Pakistan government is currently making all the right noises, it has no record in defending women’s freedom. With Islamic clerics issuing a fatwa against Malala and the Taleban widening its threats to supportive journalists there is a danger that the clamour for change will dissipate.
Last week, news anchor Hamid Mir said he could see his nation’s head bowed in shame. “I want to ask those who shot a girl who only wanted to go to school: ‘Do you think you are Muslims?’ ” he said. But there’s a lesson for us too. Malala’s example should teach us not only to value the state-funded education we are guaranteed as British citizens, but to use the voice it gives us to speak up for other women across the world; women who are being deprived of the very learning that would set them free.