WASHINGTON -- Human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged the United States to increase its support of Afghan girls and women.
"Afghanistan right now is the only country where girls do not have access to secondary education. They are prohibited from learning," the 24-year-old said in Washington on December 6 standing alongside U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
"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 said.
"So this is the message of Afghan girls right now: We want to see a world where all girls can have access to safe and quality education," she said as she presented a letter addressed to President Joe Biden from a 15-year-old Afghan girl named Sotodah.
According to Yousafzai, the teenage Afghan girl wrote in her letter that "the longer schools and universities remain closed to girls, the more it will shade hope for [their] future."
"Girls' education is a powerful tool for bringing peace and security," the Pakistani-born Yousafzai added while reading the letter. "If girls don't learn, Afghanistan will suffer, too."
Since the Taliban took over the conservative Muslim-majority nation in mid-August, Afghan schools have reopened, but most for boys only.
"We hope that the United States, together with the UN, will take immediate actions to ensure that girls are allowed to go back to their schools as soon as possible," Yousafzai said before a private meeting with Blinken.
As a 15-year-old in 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head on her school bus by Pakistani Taliban gunmen in her native Swat Valley, in Pakistan’s northwest, because she campaigned for the education of girls, which the militant extremist group opposes.
She recovered after months of treatment at home and abroad and was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign supporting the education of girls.
Malala graduated from Britain's Oxford University in 2020 and has since created a digital publication for girls and women and formed her own TV production company.
Blinken said Yousafzai “is truly an inspiration -- an inspiration to us, an inspiration to girls and women around the world.”
“By her work, by her efforts, [she] is making a real difference," he added.
“So, I'm very much looking forward to talking to her about the work that she's doing, the work that we're doing, and to hear from her, her ideas about how to be more effective at making sure -- as we're working for gender equity -- that girls and women have access to education," Blinken said.