On October 9, people around the world received the shocking news of the Taliban’s attempt to silence 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai as she was returning home on a school bus. Even at this young age, Malala is known for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Talibal had banned girls from attending schools before their ouster in 2009. She is more famous for the BBC blog that documented her account of life under the Taliban rule, when she was just 11. The daughter of Zia Al Deen Yousufzai, who ran a girls’ school, Malala was named after Malalai of Maiwand, a Pashtun poet and warrior woman. Her strength and courage and her fight for her right to education, therefore, is not surprising.

From Malala’s courageous stand at 14 years, the most important lesson to be learned perhaps is that we must exhaust all efforts to educate girls around the world.

The vicious attempt to murder Malala came just a couple of days before the world’s first celebration of the International Day of the Girl, which was formally proposed as a resolution by Canada in the United Nations General Assembly. On December 19, 2011, the day of October 11, 2012, was adopted as the inaugural International Day of the Girl. Though the theme for the first International Day of the Girl is ‘End Child Marriage’, Malala’s tragic story has not been ignored by public figures, activists or the general public. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have publicly condemned this tragic and disgusting act. There have been angry protests calling to bring Malala’s attackers to justice.

Malala is only one of the millions of girls subject to injustice and cruelty. Girls around the world are being deprived of their basic rights to a childhood and to a bright future every day. In any man-made or natural disaster, girls are the biggest losers. They are subject to immense discrimination and brutality, mostly due to cultural norms and ignorance. The statistics in every aspect are extremely alarming:

• Around the world today, one girl in every seven marries before the age of 15.

• 25-50 per cent of girls in developing countries become mothers before the age of 18.

• 70 per cent of all children out of school are girls.

• 75 per cent of 15-24 year-olds living with HIV in Africa are females.

Many of these issues could be prevented, or minimised at the very least, if girls were given the chance to attend school. In her own way, Malala shed light on the reasons girls like her should attend school. Putting girls in schools has immediate, significant benefits. For example, according to Unicef, girls with seven or more years of education marry on an average four years later and have 2.2 fewer children. An extra year of primary schooling boosts a girl’s eventual income by 10-20 per cent, while a year of secondary school increases wage by 15-25 per cent. Furthermore, evidence from Zimbabwe shows that 15 to 18‐year‐old girls who are enrolled in school are five times less likely to have HIV than those who have dropped out. However, more than anything, a girl must be in school because it is her right, regardless of the many benefits it may yield.

In January of 2009, Malala wrote on her blog: “On my way from school to home I heard a man saying: ‘I will kill you’. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”

That such thoughts could cross the mind of an 11-year old is outrageous and unacceptable. As I read this entry, I wondered: Could a parent in the UAE just imagine that in certain places around the world parents not very different from them send their daughters to school like they are sending them off to war? What is a right here is an unthinkable and unattainable privilege elsewhere.

In Malala’s case, it is a privilege that could have brought her doom.

In honour of the young, brave Malala, let us play an active role in ensuring every girl gets the education she deserves. I call on the UAE community to join the movement towards ending every form of discrimination and injustice towards girls worldwide through education. Not only is educating girls a long-term investment that can change communities as a whole, but it is also an urgent matter that we cannot afford to wait on or overlook any longer.

Maria Hanif is a development specialist. You can follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/maria_hanif