ISLAMABAD, Jan 11: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said she was "overwhelmed" to be back in her native Pakistan on Saturday, as she attended a summit on girls' education in the Islamic world that has been snubbed by Afghanistan's Taliban government.
The summit has brought together education leaders from Muslim-majority countries, but without Afghanistan -- the only country in the world where girls are banned from school.
"The Muslim world including Pakistan faces significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to education for girls," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said at the opening of the summit in the capital Islamabad.
"Denying education to girls is tantamount to denying their voice and their choice, while depriving them of their right to a bright future."
Pakistan Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP that Islamabad had extended an invitation to Kabul, "but no-one from the Afghan government was at the conference".
Muhammad al-Issa, a Saudi cleric and secretary general of the Muslim World League -- which has backed the summit -- said religion was no grounds for blocking girls from school.
"The entire Muslim world has agreed that girls education is important, and those who say that girls education is un-Islamic are wrong," he said.
Yousafzai, who was shot by Pakistan Taliban militants in 2012 when she was a schoolgirl, is due to address the conference on Sunday. —AFP
