Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai have asked those, who do not believe there is a place of girls’ rights in Islam, to re-read the Qur’an and rethink Islam’s teaching about women.
The two iconic global female figures made the suggestions at the first ever Girl Summit at Walworth Academy in UK capital London yesterday.
The British government and Unicef have jointly organised the one-day summit to promote what British premier David Cameron said was a global movement against “preventable evils” such as child marriage and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Hasina and Malala were accompanied by Cameron and Burkina Faso First Lady Chantal Compaore in the lone high-level session of the summit yesterday.
Alongside formal representation from 21 countries and more than 200 NGOs from around 30 other countries, Hasina and Cameron were the only heads of governments to take part in the summit.
Yesterday, the summit passed a charter in which 21 signatory countries and the other participants made various pledges to end FGM and child, early and forced marriages.
World Health Organisation defines Female Genital Mutilation as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” FGM is common in the African continent.
Speaking at the high-level session, Hasina said Islam was “the” religion that promoted women’s rights; but some people in Bangladesh had been misleading the society by campaigning against the cause.
She said her party Awami League had made some policies to prevent child marriage when it first came to power in 1996 which religion-based fundamentalist parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami had always opposed. When eventually Jamaat came to power in 2001 by being a part of the collusion government, they cracked many of those policies.
Fortunately, the Bangladesh PM said, when Awami League came back to power in 2009, many of those policies had been reinstated.
She also said the four most important posts of the current Bangladesh parliament were held by women – the speaker, leader of the house, the deputy leader of the house and the leader of the opposition.
She explained that none of those came easily; they faced many problems but eventually, as awareness was created, people accepted these women.
“We developed the entire society. You cannot achieve these by developing half of the society,” Hasina said.
She pledged in front of the summit that by 2021, no girl under 15 years of age would be married; by 2041, no girl under 18 would be married.
In her turn, Pakistani rights activist Malala Yousafzai described the ordeals that they had to face in the Swat Valley during the Taliban rule.
In 2007, they used to go to school everyday, after the Taliban terrorists did not let them go to school. “They [Taliban] shut down more than 400 schools in the area... and they did that in the name of Islamic law.”
She said women’s liberation was not a new thing; Prophet Mohammad’s wife Khadeja was a businesswomen and her own independent identity.
Terming Islam as a religion of peace that promoted equal rights for women, the prodigal rights activist said those, who spoke against women education in the name of Islam, should “read Qur’an again.”
Sharing the experiences from her visit to Nigeria, Malala said she had seen how women were abducted there and now she was working on Nigerian girls.
Towards the end of her speech, she said women were “the human beings” and therefore the long tradition of seeing them as different should end.
“This [the tradition] does not come from heaven or God... So, we can change this,” she affirmed.
Education, in her view, was the solution for all the problems that the Girl Summit had been discussing.
British PM David Cameron said the summit was given so much importance because child marriage and FGM were clear violations of girls’ rights.
He said at least 130,000 girls had been affected by FGM in the UK only; the global figure was a staggering 130 million.
Cameron said the summit was crucial because it gave those, who had been victims of child marriage and FGM, the courage to speak up about their ordeals. That, he said, was a really big achievement.
Regarding child marriage, he said around 700 million people in the world have been married as a child and 200 million more were running the risks.
He also said education was the best way to fight the problems they had been discussing.
He pledged allocations of £25m for fighting child marriage and £45m to prevent FGM.
Burkina Faso First Lady Chantal Compaore, the other panelist of the high level session, talked about a political will to adopt a long education programme to fight FGM in her country and elsewhere in the world.
Girl Summit charter the signatories of the Girl Summit Charter agreed on the following:
“Child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation must end, and the elimination of these practices should be reflected in the post 2015 development framework.
“Every girl and women at risk of or effected by these practices must have access to appropriate services like education, counseling, shelter, reproductive health and medical care.
“The government must design and implement effective, properly funded policies and clear legislation to end these practices forever, and to protect anyone at risk. Where necessary they should work together across borders to implement these policies and legislation.
“Legislation alone is not enough. We will all raise awareness and understanding so everyone respects the equal value and potential of girls. We will support local groups around the world —led by women and men, girls and boys — to do the same. Lasting change will come from communities themselves.
“We will gather more and better data, improve the way we measure social change, and make open source data publicly available to help make the right decisions about how to end these practices.
“We must drive systematic, sustainable change in the way girls and women are valued in our societies, so they can seize the same opportunities and realise the same rights as boys and men.
“We need to invest in all girls so they have the knowledge, education, skills and self confidence to take control of their lives. We will work together across the different systems, including education, health and reproductive health, justice, social protection, child protection and civil registration.
“Young people are a powerful force for change. We need to listen to, and consult with, young people — especially those affected – and support youth-led intiatives to break the cycle of these practices.
“All of us need to take action to end these practices, including governments, faith groups, traditional leaders, non-government orgnisations and civil society groups, young people, practitioners, people affected by these practices, communities, international organisations, media and private sector.
“The individual commitments that accompany this Charter will be monitored and assessed on an annual basis, and the results published online.
