WASHINGTON – The US Congress has approved the ‘Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act’ that will increase the number of scholarships available to Pakistani women under the Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program (MNBSP).
The programme for calendar years 2020 through 2022 was passed by the House of Representatives in March 2020, and it sailed through the US Senate on January 1. The bill now will be sent to the White House for US President Donald Trump to sign it into law, reported international media.
The bill requires the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to make efforts to award at least 50 percent of the scholarships to Pakistani women, across a range of academic disciplines and in accordance with existing eligibility criteria.
The Act also requires USAID to work in collaboration with the Pakistani private sector and Pakistani diaspora in the United States to improve and expand access to education programmes in the country.
On October 10, 2014, Malala shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi in recognition of her struggle for girls and women education.
In 2008, she launched the campaign; despite it was opposed by Taliban. As she remained reluctant, the terrorists attacked her and shot in the head when she was going home from school in 2012.
