DES MOINES — Education activist Malala Yousafzai discussed how families worldwide weigh the risk of food insecurity against their daughters’ education at the World Food Prize Wednesday.
“We see that there’s usually a trade-off for families, especially in developing countries where there’s poverty and food insecurity, that they sometimes feel like they have to choose between a girl’s education and food security for the family,” Yousafzai said.
Alternatively, families that educate their daughters have increased long-term food security because of their daughters’ income.
“Usually a girl is pulled out of school and married off because they feel that this would be less burden on the family,” Yousafzai said. “At the same time, sometimes the girls are actually encouraged to go and earn for the family so they become part of child labor. I have seen it in my own villages in the north of Pakistan.”
The Malala Fund advocates for free and accessible education for girls so families do not feel forced to weigh their daughters’ education against food security.
“This is a basic fundamental human right that no girl, no child should be excluded from,” Yousafzai said. “That’s exactly what the activists who we support in countries like Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Brazil, and other parts of the world are doing. Passing laws against child marriage or making education policies more gender inclusive, or talking about addressing extreme poverty, or even talking about the international debt justice conversation because all of these things are interconnected.”
Yousafzai first advocated for girls’ right to an education at 11 years old. At 15 years old, she survived a Taliban gunman shooting her on the bus after school, and her activism for girls’ education gained international attention. A
At 17 years old, she became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Using her platform, Yousafzai met with policymakers, presidents and prime ministers to advocate for girls’ education.
“When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, I was making phone calls, trying to reach their offices, and I realized that there was actually no commitment to protecting the education of girls,” Yousafzai said. “People usually stand with you when you have survived, and when you have become sort of a hero to the world, but, you know, that commitment is never for those who are just like you. These girls, they have the exact same stories as me, but nobody’s brave enough to step forward for them.”
Secretly, the Malala Fund works with Afghan women and girls to keep them in school.
“There are radio lessons, there are TV lessons, there are underground secret schools, which are a lot harder to operate because the Taliban are checking if a girl or a woman is stepping out of the home and is seeking her education,” Yousafzai said. “When I speak to them, it just gives me shivers. I’m like we still live in an age where a girl has to secretly seek her education because it has become a crime for her to be learning.”
For her birthday, Yousafzai visited with schoolgirls in Pakistan over the summer.
“Through the Nobel Peace Prize money, we started supporting a school in my parents’ village where there was no secondary school for girls,” Yousafzai said. “I said that if we can make it happen there in my parents’ village, which is up in the mountains in a remote, most challenging area, I think we can make a school in every other part of the country.”
The first class graduated last year and now attends universities.
“They are the first ones in their families, in their community for generations to ever get to their education and to now be on this pathway, to have a career,” Yousafzai said. “They are going to be the role models for girls because when girls see other women in positions, they believe that they can also be there. When policymakers are deciding the future of the next generation, they cannot exclude education from that. They cannot exclude equality from that, because women are half of the population, and we cannot go forward when half of us are held back.”