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Malala says if world military spending is cut by 8 days, all kids can get 12 years of free education

OSLO, July 7, 2015, Source

 

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday urged world leaders to cut "eight days of military spending" to give all children access to 12 years of free education.

 

About US$39 billion (S$52.5 billion) would be needed each year to fund the schooling, according to an estimate from the laureate's non-profit group the Malala Fund.

 

"It may appear as a huge number but the reality is it is not much at all," Malala said at a United Nations education summit in Oslo, as she returned to the city for the first time since picking up the Peace Prize with child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi in December last year.

 

"In fact, and unfortunately, US$39 billion is spent on (the) military in only eight days," she said.

 

Malala, who in 2012 survived after being shot in the head for her support of girls' schools in Pakistan, met in June with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to discuss the coming package of official Sustainable Development Goals the United Nations plans to release later this year.

 

A meeting is scheduled in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, next week to find ways to finance the new targets.

 

"My message is that in these goals secondary education would be ensured," said the child activist, who turns 18 this week.

 

"The money to send each child to primary and secondary education for twelve years for free is already there," she added.

 

In September the UN will weigh proposals for which targets countries should achieve over the next 15 years, which will replace the Millenium Development Goals created in 2000.

 

A report released on Monday by the UN said the effort had helped lift millions out of poverty, as the number of people living in extreme poverty declined by more than half between 1990 and 2015, from 1.9 billion to 836 million.

 

In the same period, the number of children dying before their fifth birthday also fell by more than half, dropping from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births.

 

"But progress has been uneven across regions and countries, leaving significant gaps," the UN said in a statement.

 

"Conflicts remain the biggest threat to human development, with fragile and conflict-affected countries typically experiencing the highest poverty rates," it said.

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I am here as the voice of children, says Malala Yousafzai as she turns 18

Tuesday, 7 July 2015 - 7:59pm IST | Place: Oslo | Agency: Reuters, Source

 

"The world needs to think bigger and it needs to dream bigger," she said, saying UN goals for 2015 wrongly only focused on universal primary schooling. Fifty-nine million children, many in war zones, do not even attend primary school.

 

Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, urged an extra $39 billion a year for education worldwide on Tuesday and said she wants to remain the "voice of children" even after she turns 18 next week.

 

The cash, to allow all children to attend secondary schools, was the equivalent of cutting global military spending for eight days, she told Reuters at an international education conference in Oslo.

 

"The world needs to think bigger and it needs to dream bigger," she said, saying UN goals for 2015 wrongly only focused on universal primary schooling. Fifty-nine million children, many in war zones, do not even attend primary school.

 

Best known by her first name, Malala became a global symbol of defiance after she was shot on a school bus in 2012 by the Taliban for advocating girls' rights.

 

The extra $39 billion a year is the estimated cost of extending basic education to 12 years from nine. "If nine years of education is not enough for your children, it is not enough for the rest of the world's children," she told several hundred delegates including United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

 

Malala, who started her speech by saying "I am here as the voice of children", also noted she becomes an adult on July 12. "My life of being a child will come to an end, it's quite hard," she said.

 

But she said her approach will be unaffected. "I think there's no limit of age... to speak of all children's rights. My father has been doing it as a teacher and I will continue to do it as a woman," she said. "As an adult, you can be the voice of children."

 

Malala, who now lives in England, was a joint winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Ban praised her in a speech, saying she "embodied the courage of girls resolved to claim their rights."

 

Also at Tuesday's conference, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg won UN backing for a commission to look into new ways to raise funds for education. It would make recommendations by September 2016. The commission, also backed by the leaders of Indonesia, Malawi, Chile and the UN children's fund UNICEF, will be chaired by former British prime minister Gordon Brown.

 

Malala, who has two more years at school, said she hoped to return to Pakistan after university. "I am more interested in history, economics, these kind of subjects, so I might go to Oxford," she said. But she added, jokingly: "I have got so many honorary degrees - from Edinburgh and many others."

FM

these sorts of things do not correlate. The US spent billions in Afghanistan to build infrastructure, schools etc but they resist to send girls to school. Malala came from a culture that tried to kill her for going to school India has as many children out of school than all the world because they are put to work. Money does not solve problems. The people have to want their problems solved...or recognize they have a problem to solve. I doubt if money can help indians use a toilet. There they are paid to use it and still refuse.

 

Also, military spending is more than research on weapons. It is on technology we need, medicine, surveys, research....It is military money that give us the modern electronics and communications system. Then there is space tech medicine, materials science. 

 

FM

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