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"The Answer to Backwardness and Extremism in Afghanistan is to Educate Girls”
Monday, November 19, 2001

During a press conference in Downing Street, Claire Short, Estelle Morris and Cherie Blair told reporters that education was the key to solving the plight of women in Afghanistan.

Clare Short, Secretary of State for Overseas Development, outlined the importance of educating Afghan girls in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, she said:
"If you can get a generation of children, even just through primary education, including the girls, it brings about big systemic change. Girls who have been to school, even just five years of schooling, as they grow up they marry slightly later, have slightly less children, who are massively more likely to survive, household income is better for girls who have been to school, and they are better at getting their own children into education and getting healthcare. So if you can get a generation through, as they grow up they lift up their country."

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. One in four children die before the age of five. Maternal mortality rates are some of the worst in the world and life expectancy is 44 years. Illiteracy is one of the highest in the world and 90% of girls are illiterate. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996 they closed 63 girls schools and more than 100,000 girls were immediately thrown out of school.

Estelle Morris, Secretary of State for Education said:
"Imagine how difficult it is for doctors and nurses and people from the United Nations going in with a health program, if the people they are meeting can't read, can't write, and haven't the background knowledge to understand what is needed in terms of health and looking after families. So investment in education, as ever, whichever country in the world you are in, whatever stage of your life you are at, is always about two things. It is about individual freedom, and it is about individual fulfillment, and it's about individual rights."

The Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair was also present at the press conference. Addressing a group of refugee Afghan women who had shared their experiences with her, Mrs. Blair said:
"During my legal career, much of which has been spent in specializing in Human Rights issues and issues about women's equality, and certainly in the last four years alongside Tony since he became Prime Minister, I have had the privilege of meeting many women around the world, many of whom have suffered injustice and cruelty, and have fought against that injustice and cruelty. But I don't think I can recall repression or cruelty quite as horrifying as that joyless regime that the Taliban have imposed on the people of Afghanistan, and the Al-Qu'eda network which supports it."
(More: 10 Downing News Room News Source)
2001 © Executive Office of the Prime Minister.

Dan