Conflict-affected Countries: Adolescent Girls

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D’Souza (CB)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, for tabling the debate and for her persistent pursuit of improvement and reform in this extremely important area.

I want to tell a story this evening. It is a very short story with some uplifting elements. Early in 2002, when I was a governor of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, I went as part of a small delegation to Afghanistan to see what we might be able to do. During my time there, I met an extraordinary young man called Aziz Royesh. One comes across extraordinary people in one’s life and he was one of them. He had an absolute passion for education, and in particular for girls’ education.

To that end he had set up a school—although it could hardly be called that: it was made up of a couple of tiny rooms in a bombed-out building in the extreme west of Kabul, which was the front line during the civil war and which had been utterly terrorised in previous years under the Taliban regime. He managed to set up a school with 30 pupils in three shifts, because there was not room for more than 10 pupils at a time. The pupils ranged in age from a little girl of seven, who did carpet weaving on the side to make money for her family—it was their only source of income—to a woman of 30-plus who wanted to learn geometry to know how to divide up her land for her sons.

I was so impressed by this venture that I began to raise very small amounts of money and send them across in brown paper bags—that was how it was done then. The money was used intelligently. For example, through the money we raised, one of the larger buildings in the village was repaired: a roof was put on it and windows and heating were put in, all through local builders. That was a masterstroke because it meant that the entire community crowded into the building in winter because no other heating was available. Aziz, who has become a very dear and close friend, used this opportunity to persuade families to be brave enough to send their children, especially their daughters, to school and also started adult literacy classes in the village.

The school has grown as time has gone on. In the last 13 years, almost 500 girls have graduated from the Marefat school, almost 98% of whom have gone on to higher education, including universities in south and central Asia, the Far East and Europe. A total of 271 full scholarships have been won by the school. One amazing statistic is that in 2012, the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh offered 16 scholarships to girls from the region, including Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh as well as Afghanistan, and the Marefat school won 11 of them. That simply illustrates the level of education provided by the school.

A total of 60 students went to the USA for high school and undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, of whom 42 were girls. On their return, these Marefat graduates worked in the President’s palace, the First Lady’s office, various ministries, the Parliament, the Independent Election Commission, the media and the academic world. Some 28% of the teaching staff at Marefat are themselves graduates of the school.

The UK contribution to education is already very great. Almost every person who has spoken in the debate has mentioned the importance of education, which we acknowledge. Indeed, DfID has done itself proud in supporting education—but this must continue and it must expand. I have told this story simply to illustrate that it is possible, even in the most difficult conflict situations, which Afghanistan represents, to build education that is of the highest quality and to expand it beyond the community where it begins.

I think we have all acknowledged that education is the magic bullet of development. If you educate a girl, you also educate a family; you educate a neighbourhood, you educate a region and eventually you educate a country. This is the only pathway to peace.