Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said preventing girls from receiving an education is “tantamount to denying their voice” as he opened a major Muslim-led summit on the subject that remains sensitive in the Islamic world.
The gathering attracted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai – who is scheduled to speak on January 12 – while it was apparently shunned by Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who activists say are among the world’s leading violators of the rights of women and girls.
"The Muslim world, including Pakistan, faces significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to education for girls," Sharif said at the opening of the event in Islamabad.
"Denying education to girls is tantamount to denying their voice and their choice, while depriving them of their right to a bright future," he added.
On January 11, no Taliban representatives were present among participants from some 50 Muslim-majority countries when the two-day conference opened in the Pakistani capital.
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A senior Taliban diplomat in Islamabad told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that “so far, Kabul has not told us anything about this event.”
Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Pakistan's education minister, said, “No one from the Afghan government was at the conference," but they were formally invited to the event.
The Taliban government banned teenage girls from education soon after returning to power in August 2021.
Since then, the Islamist group has imposed draconian education on women’s work, education, and mobility despite domestic opposition and a global outcry.
It is now the only nation among the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that bans women’s education. The ban has been widely opposed by Afghans and internationally.
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"The entire Muslim world has agreed that girls' education is important,” said Muhammad al-Issa, a Saudi cleric and secretary-general of the Muslim World League, who organized the event with the Pakistani government.
“Those who say that girls' education is un-Islamic are wrong," he added.
Nobel laureate Yousafzai wrote on X ahead if the conference that “leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women and girls.”
In 2012, Pakistani Taliban militants shot Malala in the northwestern valley of Swat because she campaigned for girls' education.
SEE ALSO: A Decade After Malala Yousafzai Was Shot, The Pakistani Taliban Is Returning To Her Native Swat ValleyThe Taliban banned women’s education despite promising to allow it while it negotiated a peace agreement with the United States.
Senior Taliban government leaders, who are Sunni Deobandi clerics, have adopted a "fringe opinion" of Islamic Shari'a law to enforce the ban on the education of teenage girls and women.
Pakistan has also faced criticism for violation of the rights of girls and women in the country, particularly in rural areas. But poverty, lack of infrastructure, and cultural issues have also hampered the educational system.
“Millions of Pakistani children do not attend school, and those that do must deal with absent teachers and poor learning environments, among other things,” the U.S.-based Wilson Center said in a report.