Srinagar: Young girls and women Monday held a protest in front of United Nations office here against the denial of right to education to girls in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
They presented a memorandum to UN officials here.
The protest was organised by J&K Youth Society and was led by its Vice President Yana Mir.
The girls and women held peaceful protests and denounced the denial of right to education to girls in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir.
The memorandum was presented to UN officials by the protestors on behalf of the women of Jammu and Kashmir.
“We would like to bring to your attention the deplorable state of educational opportunities to our sisters in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir with an appeal to initiate a United Nations driven process to protect the rights of these women to secular education,” read the memorandum.
“Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, all schools and educational institutions for girls have been shut down. The two decades of enforced peace under an international mandate had provided a glimmer of hope to thousands of girls and their families that Afghan girls could finally have access to education without fear,” it said.
“The geo-political compromise of August 15, 2021 changed all that in the blink of an eye without a thought to the implications for half of that country’s population. If the plight of Afghan women and men is to be the responsibility of Afghans alone, then they should have been left alone a long time ago.”
“A lot of propaganda is carried out across the United Nations and other multilateral platforms about the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir. The proponents and buyers of this propaganda conveniently ignore the wide gap in the educational opportunities afforded to the girls of J&K in comparison with their sisters in those parts of J&K which are illegally under foreign occupation,” the memorandum said.
“Pakistan occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan today have been sadly left behind on the education front, depriving our sisters of the right to modern and secular education. Over the years, Pakistani leadership has resorted to spreading religious conservatism as a means of political domination.”
“A vast majority of Pakistan’s population only have access to religious education through a flourishing chain of Madrassas. Education cannot be fettered by dogmatic ideas and students have a right to the vast expanse of knowledge that exists. Absence of modern schools and colleges in PoK and G-B has deprived our sisters the opportunity that we have come to take for granted in India. Not just in J&K, we have access to any institution of our choice anywhere in India,” it said.
“It is our fervent appeal that the United Nations take note of the deplorable condition of girls’ education, a right that has been cruelly and forcibly snatched away from them for reasons of history, for which they are not responsible nor should they be made to pay the price for it.”
“As far as the plight of our sisters in Pakistan is concerned, the less said the better. Except for the urban centers in Punjab and Sindh, access to modern education is non-existent even for boys. In their effort to suppress the freedom movement in Baluchistan, the Pakistani leadership has unleashed extremist religious parties which indulge in indiscriminate killings in a display of intolerance that is reminiscent of medieval times,” it said. “Madrassas offering free education, if it can be called that, have mushroomed in Balochistan.
The poor and unemployed families of one of the most richly endowed Provinces have no choice but to send their children to these Madrassas, where their fragile minds are poisoned with retrogressive ideas and information.
In the absence of employment opportunities, students of these Madrassas end up becoming teachers themselves, further proliferating these institutions and their teachings.
The government’s half-hearted efforts to standardize Madrassa education have been met with resistance from the powerful conservative forces in the country.”
“The situation is no better in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where all moderate and progressive political forces have been sacrificed. The Province has seen a level of Talibanization that is not there even in Afghanistan.
The educational prospects of the girl child in KP can be described in two words: Malala Yusufzai. Our sisters in KP face as bleak a future as those in Afghanistan,” it said.
“Unless the rot is stemmed, very soon most of our Pakistani sisters, barring the rich and powerful, would be subject to the same future.”
The memorandum said: “We have deliberately not included facts and figures as these are well documented and publicly available for anyone to see. Our effort here is to make you see the helplessness of our sisters in these countries.
Their leaderships are committed to a kind of conservatism that has no place for women, let alone education for them. It is our sincere hope that you will raise this matter in front of the world community in a manner that objectively and apolitically seeks solutions to this grave human rights problem.”