Malala Yousafzai has called on world leaders to deliver on their commitments, and ensure that every child has access to 12 years of free, quality primary and secondary education.Speaking at the summit, Malala urged the world leaders to invest an additional $39 billion annually to make this promise a reality. She urged world leaders to cut “eight days of military spending” to give all children access to 12 years of free education. She said that to guarantee twelve years of universal fee-free primary and secondary education will cost an estimated $340b per year through 2030. The current funding shortfall is $39b — equivalent to just eight days of global military spending. It is worth noting that Global military expenditures have been showing very slight declines in the past three years, coming in at $1.776tr last year according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute. But these declines hide a fundamental reality: the centre of gravity of military expenditure is moving away from the Americas towards the Middle East and Asia. Countries in our neighbourhood are arming themselves at an alarming rate. The US remains the world’s leading arms spender, but the list of the top 15 countries with the highest military expenditures today includes India, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.It is heartening that Pakistan does not feature on this list — we can hardly afford to. But each of these countries has a special responsibility to ensure their growing military expenditures are matched by equally robust increases in their education spending. Pakistan too, as a rival of one of these countries and a strategic partner of the remaining three, shares a special responsibility to ensure that the competition it chooses to pursue does not come at the cost of educating our future generations. The young Malala took enormous risks to underline some very obvious facts: that education is necessary, that girls are as entitled to it as boys. Now she is once again reminding us of our tragically misplaced priorities in which our hatred and thirst for power today trumps our investment in our children’s future.
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