“The daily reality for Afghan girls and women has become bleak and disheartening under the Taliban regime. It’s not just that their opportunities have been cut off, it’s the profound sense of worthlessness and loss of purpose that now defines their everyday experience,” – those were the opening remarks prepared by Jamila Afghani, 2022 Aurora Prize Laureate and President of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Afghanistan, for “The Right to Education” session held on May 9, 2024, during the Human Rights and Humanitarian Forum in Los Angeles, California. The remarks were read to the audience by the event’s moderator Louise Richardson, Aurora Prize Selection Committee Member and President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, as Ms. Afghani was unable to attend the discussion.
Other panelists included Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-Founder of Teach For All; Marguerite Barankitse, 2016 Aurora Prize Laureate and Founder of Maison Shalom; Anna Spain Bradley, Professor of Law and Former Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at the UCLA School of Law; and Shantha Sinha, Aurora Prize Expert Panel Member, Founder of the MV Foundation, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad.
As she kicked off the discussion, moderator Louise Richardson, Aurora Prize Selection Committee Member and President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, talked about her lifelong career in education and how privileged she felt to be able to have had it. “I went to university shortly after my seventeenth birthday, and I only left last year, so I believe passionately in the power of education to transform lives. Like many people in this room, I’ve been a beneficiary of an education generously funded by others, but not everybody is so lucky. Seven hundred and fifty million people in the world today cannot read or write,” noted Ms. Richardson.
Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-Founder of Teach For All, also highlighted the severe lack of educational access in many regions and emphasized the crucial role of educators in shaping the future. “We believe that, as educators, we have the greatest role to play in reshaping the world. What happens in our classrooms today will predict the kind of world we have tomorrow,” said Ms. Kopp before citing a devastating example: “I have to say that, from what we’ve seen in marginalized communities all over the world, that [sad] reality exists for many. I was just in Niger, which is one of the highest poverty countries in the world. Ninety-nine percent of 10-year-olds cannot read a basic sentence or do a simple math equation in Niger.”
Marguerite Barankitse, 2016 Aurora Prize Laureate and Founder of Maison Shalom, recounted a heartbreaking story from her teenage years. When war erupted between ethnic groups in her home country, Burundi, she witnessed the military entering her Catholic school classroom to take their teacher away while everyone else remained silent, leaving her feeling alone as she questioned why. “I grew up in a very Christian family, and when I went to school, I believed that we are one human family, and we can share [everything]. My Mom has never even talked to me about my ethnic group because she said, ‘You are a child of God. Everybody is your brother and sister,’” recalled Ms. Barankitse.
Dealing with deeply seated inequalities that create such tragic reality, noted Shantha Sinha, Aurora Prize Expert Panel Member, Founder of the MV Foundation, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad, is made even harder by conservative groups intent on maintaining the status quo and often prioritizing their interests over the educational rights of children. “When we started our work, we thought we should work on child slavery and children who are bonded laborers. It is a deeply contentious issue, and it disturbed the caste relations. [In India], most of the children who are in slavery are from the untouchable community, the most marginalized Dalit community. And we got a lot of political reaction and violence in the process. We had to work through that,” said Professor Sinha.
Anna Spain Bradley, Professor of Law and Former Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at the UCLA School of Law, pointed out that in considering the right to education and its associated obligations, it is important to extend our thoughts beyond legal frameworks to include its political implications. “Receiving an education is a political act. Providing an education is a political act. We are in a state in the world today where having a giant part of your population be educated – and we should put that in brackets, because it means a lot of different things – creates an activism among citizens that many in governments and many in other leadership roles may or may not enjoy,” explained Professor Bradley.