To commemorate International Literacy Day on September 8, 2022, Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE), with the support of Saving 9, Pakistan Youth Change Advocates (PYCA), and Science Fuse held a webinar titled 'Rethinking Education in Emergencies and the Role of Technology in Education Provision for Affected Communities'. The discussion was centered on the climate-related post-monsoon flooding that has wreaked havoc in 80 districts in 5 provinces of Pakistan, impacted 33+ million people and caused 1200+ deaths.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in one of his speeches shortly after independence equated education with Pakistan's ability to survive. The founder of Pakistan said, "Education is a matter of life and death for Pakistan". And yet here we are, 74 years later, hosting the world's largest illiterate and unskilled population. Human life is impacted by the overarching role education plays and therefore, is the driving force for change in almost all aspects of life. Financing for education should be a top priority for the Federal, Provincial and Local governments as it is a vital investment for human and economic development.
Throughout history, humans, as social beings have occupied spaces to grow, adapt, and expand in the form of society. We have achieved this in the demarcates of certain rights, which are inherent to our existence. The United Nations has defined basic human rights as rights fundamental to all human beings, which include but are not restricted to, the right to life and liberty, the right to work and education, freedom of association to organize themselves and most importantly, freedom of opinion and expression.
Article 25A of the Constitution of Pakistan: Right to education-The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law. Unfortunately, the government of Pakistan has not been able to keep its promise of providing free education to all school-age children. The total number of out-of-school children in Pakistan has increased to more than 22 million and approximately 19 million of them are involved in child labor.
While the lockdown has taken aback most people by the unprecedented amounts of restrictions it has placed on their mobility and the constant surveillance it has led to, there is one segment of the society that isn't completely unfamiliar to this way of life and that is women and girls. For women & girls, especially living in a country like Pakistan, life has always entailed heavy restrictions on mobility, monitoring of their whereabouts and being constantly told that the world outside the house is unsafe for them. Due to a combination of these socio-cultural barriers and governance failures, over 12.6 million girls in Pakistan were already out of school before the global pandemic broke out.