GENEVA: Qatar has called for effective national and international measures to remove all obstacles facing girls’ and women’s right to education.
Addressing the 58th session of the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Noor Ibrahim Al Sada, Second Secretary at Qatar’s Permanent Mission to the UN, proposed national legislations to ensure girls’ and women’s right to education without discrimination, including admission requirements, to enable them to enjoy benefits of education.
Such legislations would stipulate free and compulsory primary education for girls and women without discrimination, she said during a general discussion on girls’ and women’s right to education.
She called for the adoption of education policy to develop strategies and plans for education with a focus on education for girls and women in extraordinary circumstances such as wars, natural disasters and a system to assess and monitor effectiveness of measures taken.
In her keynote speech, she said though girls’ and women’s right to education are set in international and regional conventions on human rights, as stipulated in Article 10 of CEDAW, there are obstacles — including poverty, negative stereotyping of women and lack of security in some areas — to be removed to provide this right,
She reviewed measures that can be adopted at the international and national level to ensure compliance with the right of girls and women to education.
At the international level, she said initiatives and global partnerships should be made to attract support for the provision of the right to education in developing countries suffering exceptional circumstances.
Al Sada highlighted the initiative of H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson, Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development — ‘Educate A Child’ — to provide the possibility of a good education for millions of children around the world.
She said about two million children have benefited from this initiative so far, including a large number of girls who had been deprived of education for various reasons.
Ensuring girls and women’s access to a good education without discrimination will have impact on the community and ensure a better future for them through the creation of opportunities leading to stability and development, she said. QNA
