January 17, 2025 | 10:38 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders to back efforts to make gender apartheid a crime under international law. The Nobel laureate called on the leaders to speak out against Afghanistan's Taliban over its treatment of women and girls.
Yousafzai urges Muslim leaders to denounce Taliban
Citing Reuters, Malala attended a summit on girls' education in Muslim communities attended by international leaders and scholars in her home country of Pakistan, on Sunday, January 12, 2025.
During the occasion, Yousafzai said Muslim voices must lead the way against the policies of the Taliban, who have barred teenage girls from school and women from universities.
"In Afghanistan an entire generation of girls will be robbed of its future," she said in a speech in Islamabad. "As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voice, use your power."
The summit, organised by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Muslim World League, included dozens of ministers and scholars from Muslim-majority countries.
Yousafzai asked the scholars to "openly challenge and denounce the Taliban's oppressive laws." She also asked political leaders to support the addition of gender apartheid to crimes against humanity under international criminal law.
The summit was hosted by Pakistan, which has had frosty relations with the Afghan Taliban in recent months over accusations that militants are using Afghan soil to launch attacks on Pakistan, a charge the Taliban deny.
Citing CNN, the Taliban claim they respect women's rights in accordance with their interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law. Taliban administration spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Yousafzai's statements.
No foreign government has formally recognised the Taliban since it took over Afghanistan in 2021, and diplomats have said steps towards recognition require a change of course on women's rights.
Who is Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai has long raised concerns about the Taliban's ban on education for women and girls. Under the pen name “Gul Makai,” she documented her life under Taliban’s threat.
Yousafzai is not only a girl passionate about learning and education but also willing to fight for the right to education for all women across the globe. Young Malala became one of the victims of the Pakistani Taliban’s movement as she was shot in the head while returning home from school. This motivated her to speak out about the depravity of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In 2022, the Taliban banned education for girls. Citing Aljazeera, the armed group closed girls’ high schools just hours after reopening them for the first time, sparking a small protest from women and girls in the capital Kabul.
Malala Yousafzai at the time said the ban on girls’ education would not last forever because Afghan women now know what it means to be “empowered.”
Malala believes that women, especially girls, have realized the importance of education and consider depriving them of the right to education a crime. However, she still has a long way to go in raising awareness of the Taliban’s crimes of perpetuating gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
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