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“Pakistan’s future depends on educating its children, including its girls.”Īn “upward bottleneck” exists as children, especially girls, get older. “Even parents who are not educated themselves understand that their daughters’ future depends on them going to school, but the government is abandoning these families,” Gerntholtz said. © Insiya Syed for Human Rights Watch, September 2018. Students at morning exercises at Behar Colony Government Secondary school for girls located in the Lyari neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan. Aisha’s daughter left school when she was 9 because of her parents’ concerns about her safety walking to school.

The nearest government school for girls is a 30-minute walk and goes only through fifth grade. And there are many more schools for boys than for girls.Īisha, around age 30, lives with her husband and their six children in an area of Peshawar where the nearest government school for boys, offering nursery school through 10th grade, is less than a five-minute walk away. The situation is far worse in rural areas. Government schools are in such short supply that even in Pakistan’s major cities, many children cannot reach a school on foot safely in a reasonable amount of time. As of 2017, Pakistan was spending less than 2.8 percent of its gross domestic product on education – far below the recommended 4 to 6 percent – leaving the government’s education system severely under-funded. The Pakistan government has consistently invested far less in education than is recommended by international standards. In addition to these factors within the education system, girls are also blocked from attending school by external factors including child labor, gender discrimination, child marriage, sexual harassment, insecurity, and attacks on education. Human Rights Watch also found poor quality within both government and low-cost private schools, a lack of government regulation of private schools, and corruption.

Human Rights Watch also interviewed parents, educators, experts, and activists, and visited schools.Īmong the factors keeping girls out of school, Human Rights Watch found, are the government’s under-investment in schools, lack of schools, prohibitive school fees and related costs, corporal punishment, and a failure to enforce compulsory education.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 209 people for the report – most of them with girls who never attended school or were unable to complete their education, and their families – in all four of Pakistan’s provinces: Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh.

“Many of the girls we interviewed are desperate to study, but instead are growing up without the education that would help them have options for their future.” “The Pakistan government’s failure to educate children is having a devastating impact on millions of girls,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. Download the summary and recommendations in English