Malala speaks to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
(Picture: REUTERS)Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai has called on the US to protect Afghan girls’ right to education in a meeting with Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
Ms Yousafzai, who survived a 2012 assassination attempt by the Taliban in Pakistan, called on Secretary Blinken on Monday to help protect the rights of women and girls following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.
Speaking before a closed door meeting with the top official, the activist said: “We know that Afghanistan right now is the only country where girls do not have access to secondary education.
“They are prohibited from learning, and I have been working together with Afghan girls and women’s activists.
“And there is this one message from them: that they should be given the right to work. They should be able to go to school.”
She read aloud a letter from a 15-year-old Afghan girl, Sotodah, who had written to President Biden saying the longer schools remain closed to girls, “the more it will shade hope for our future”.
Since seizing power, the Taliban has enacted draconian rules barring women from full education, and restricting women’s access to certain workplaces.
On Friday, it issued a so-called ‘special declaration’ on women’s rights which made no mention of access to schooling or work.
Ms Yousafzai told Mr Blinken she hoped the US would work to ensure that “girls are allowed to go back to their schools as soon as possible”.
Secretary Blinken told reporters before their meeting that she was an “inspiration” to the US government and women and girls around the world.
The 24-year-old activist became the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize after being recognised for her human rights advocacy.
Last month she married her partner Asser Malik in an Islamic ceremony in Birmingham in what she called a “precious day” in her life.
