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ISLAMABAD – Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders not to “legitimize” the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan and instead “raise their voices” and “use (their) power” against the militant group’s restrictions on women and girls. education.

“Don’t legitimize them,” Yousafzai said on January 12, addressing the second and final day of a Muslim-led summit on girls’ education in her native Pakistan.

“Simply put, the Taliban do not see women as human beings. They hide their crimes on cultural and religious grounds,” Yousafzai, 27, told the gathering in Islamabad.

She also called on Muslim leaders and global politicians to support efforts to make what has been called “gender apartheid” a crime under international law.

The event marked a full circle for Yousafzai, who was shot in 2012 by the Pakistani Taliban in the northwestern Swat valley for campaigning for girls’ education.

After the conference, organizers released a 17-point “The Islamabad Declaration,” including an agreement “that emphasizes that girls’ education is not only a religious obligation, but also a pressing societal necessity.”

“It is a fundamental right protected by divine laws, enjoined by Islamic teachings, reinforced by international chargers and well established by national constitutions,” it said.

Girls’ and women’s rights – especially access to education – are often a controversial issue in conservative Islamic nations. Domestic activists and international organizations have pressured leaders to promote and protect such rights, and observers have noted improvements in many, but not all, countries in recent years.

Some 47 Muslim-majority nations and organizations sent representatives to the event, but it was rejected by the Afghan Taliban, who activists say are among the world’s leading violators of women’s and girls’ rights.

Ahead of the gathering, Yousafzai said she would focus her speech on Afghanistan – which is now the only nation among the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to ban women’s education. The ban has been widely attacked by the international community and many people in Afghanistan.

“I want to talk about protecting the rights of all girls to go to school and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women and girls.” She wrote on X.

The attack on Yousafzai, who had become a target of her campaign for girls’ education, sent shock waves across Pakistan and sparked international outrage.

Yousafzai, there were 15 at the time survived after months of treatment at home and abroad and became an international figure who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

Roza Otunbayeva, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), called on leaders of Islamic nations to protect the rights of Afghan girls.

“I really encourage all these ministers…who came from all over the world to offer scholarships, to have online training, to have all kinds of training for them. This is the task of the day,” she said during a panel discussion.

‘Crime against humanity’

Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, criticized Muslim countries for what he described as being “either silent, complicit or apologetic” to the Taliban’s curtailment of Afghan women’s rights.

Echoing condemnation from the United Nations, which has labeled the Taliban’s treatment of women as “gender apartheid,” Ziauddin Yousafzai told RFE/RL that “the international community, especially Muslim countries, should call (the government in Kabul) an apartheid regime.”

He said the Taliban-led administration’s restriction of girls’ and women’s rights is a “crime against humanity”.

No Taliban representatives were present among the participants in the two-day conference, which brought together ministers and education officials from dozens of Muslim-majority countries, supported by the Muslim World League.

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 that Taliban leaders were formally invited to the event.

The Taliban government banned teenage girls from entering education shortly after their return to power in August 2021.

Since then, the Islamist group has imposed draconian bans on women’s work, education and mobility despite domestic opposition and a global outcry.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in his opening statement that preventing girls from receiving an education is “tantamount to denying them a voice” and limiting their choices.

“The Muslim world, including Pakistan, faces significant challenges in ensuring equal access to education for girls,” Sharif said.

Muhammad al-Issa, a Saudi cleric and secretary general of the Muslim World League, which organized the event with the Pakistani government, said: “The whole Muslim world has agreed that girls’ education is important.”

“Those who say girls’ education is un-Islamic are wrong,” he added.

With reporting from AFP