Cairo, 24th of November, 2022
November 25th of each year falls on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls. The deprivation of education is one of the most widespread forms of violence against girls, which stands at the core of most cases of child marriage, and results in further impoverishment, deprivation of access to employment and development opportunities, and limited job creation for women in the labor market.
In this context, the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, in cooperation with Malala International Organization for Girls’ Education, launches the “Read” campaign, to support girls’ education from a human rights and Islamic development perspective. The campaign seeks to emphasize girls’ right to education as a basis for the right to development and the right to life, and works to openly confront reactionary ideas that contribute to depriving girls of education or use justifications to close girls’ schools.
The “Read” Campaign aims to:
- Confront misconceptions related to the social, cultural and religious rights of girls, which constitute an obstacle to the access of million of girls and women to equal opportunities in education.
- Dissemination of an enlightened religious discourse based on the Women’s Rights Document issued by Al-Azhar Al-Sharif with the aim of eliminating all harmful practices related to women’s issues, including the denial of education.
- Dissemination of enlightening discourse on the importance of the right to education for girls in the Arab and Islamic world.
The campaign’s activities includes the issuance of two studies:
The first: entitled “Girls’ Education in Islam”, which deals with education from a human rights, developmental and religious perspective based on the Al-Azhar Document on Women’s Rights
Second: Policy Paper “Girls’ Education in the Islamic World…Between The qualitative crisis and development challenges”.
In addition, the campaign aims at publishing awareness messages on the media, including 16 posts about the importance of girls’ education, and publishing facts about the challenges of girls’ education in the Arab world and Islam. Finally, a short documentary film (5 minutes long) that clearly shows the importance of girls’ education will be produced and disseminated.
This coincides with the global campaign to confront violence against women and girls, which runs from November 25 to December 10.
