Malala Yousufzai told world leaders that they were failing Syria’s children, as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate spent her 18th birthday on Sunday on the Syrian border.
As she legally became an adult, the teenager who was shot by militants in her native Pakistan for campaigning for girls’ rights, opened a school for more than 200 Syrian girls living in refugee camps in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
The Malala Yousufzai All-Girls School is to offer education and skills training to girls aged 14 to 18.
Photo: EPA
“I am honored to mark my 18th birthday with the brave and inspiring girls of Syria,” Yousufzai said in a statement received in London. “I am here on behalf of the 28 million children who are kept from the classroom because of armed conflict.”
“Their courage and dedication to continue their schooling in difficult conditions inspires people around the world and it is our duty to stand by them,” she said.
“On this day, I have a message for the leaders of this country, this region and the world: You are failing the Syrian people, especially Syria’s children. This is a heartbreaking tragedy — the world’s worst refugee crisis in decades,” Yousufzai said.
Yousufzai later met with Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam at his home in Beirut, accompanied by her father and Noura Jumblatt, head of the Kayany Foundation, who invited Yousufzai to visit.
“Syrian children are suffering the most, being refugees for more than four years, deprived of education,” Yousufzai told BBC News.
“The worst thing is that the international community and world leaders are not paying attention and that’s what drives me to come here and celebrate my birthday and to say to world leaders: You need to focus on it and you need to invest here, otherwise it will be a generation lost,” she added.
Lebanon hosts nearly 1.2 million registered Syrian refugees, although the total number in the country might be even higher.
The influx has strained Lebanon, which has a population of 4 million.
Beirut has prevented the establishment of official refugee camps, giving rise to informal settlements in rural areas known as “tented settlements.”
Yousufzai was flown to Britain for treatment after the Pakistani Taliban tried to kill her in October 2012, and now lives in Britain with her family.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS