YouSaid · the spoken record

Basij-Rasikh

lines on the record
10
first
2023-06-21
most recent
2023-06-21
sittings or episodes
1
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un-security-council

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  1. “All Muslims know that, and all of us must be familiar with the Prophet Mohammed’s Hadith that tells us “seek knowledge, even as far as China”. With all respect to the members from China who are here with us today, the Prophet was not speaking literally; he was urging us as Muslims to pursue education even if we had to go to what was, at that time, the ends of the Earth to find it. I myself have gone as far as Rwanda, and so have my students. Other Afghans have gone to other nations. All of us are seekers. And with the eyes of the world watching, all of us will find what we seek.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  2. “SOLA has done that in Rwanda, and our model can be one for others to follow, all of us reaching Afghan girls in exile so that each girl not only contributes to the benefit of her host nation, but also becomes an educated Afghan woman, ready to return home to Afghanistan, ready to take up the challenge of rebuilding our beautiful country. I have said it before, and I will say it again: borders do not contain the threat of extremism. And borders do not contain the benefits brought by educated girls. The decisions made here decide the path of the spiral in which my homeland spins —down deeper into darkness, or up, rising, into tomorrow’s hope. I would like to end with this. I am a proud Muslim woman. I know very well that Prophet Mohammed spoke openly and clearly about the importance of education.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  3. “Some who neighbour Afghanistan — and I speak with great frankness — are hosting families of prospective SOLA students, families who have voluntarily gone into exile so that their daughters might have a chance to learn. What unites everyone here is the reality that the members of the Afghan diaspora are not, and must not be seen as, a burden. What we are are human beings with great human talents. Space must be allowed for opportunities to flow into diaspora communities, and those opportunities should be driven by qualified educational institutions allowed by host nations to operate within those communities.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  4. “But it should be no secret to anyone that there exist cost- effective means of ensuring reliable Internet access anywhere on Earth, including inside Afghanistan, and those means must be pursued. Afghan educators, innovators and our allies will do the rest. My second recommendation is this: the international community must ensure that Afghan refugees, particularly female refugees, have access to quality education in their nations of residence. Afghans have found refuge in our neighbouring nations and in nations across oceans. Some of those here have been hosting us for a long time, for the 40 years of war that wracked my country and for even longer. Some have been hosting us only since the fall of Kabul, not quite two years ago.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  5. “First, the international community must ensure that the Internet always remains open and accessible within Afghanistan. When girls cannot go to school, we as educators can bring school to them. And our classes are only a smartphone and an online connection away. Our classrooms exist in the palm of a girl’s hand, and the world opens up before her eyes. The Taliban say that women and girls should remain hidden behind the walls of the home. I say we beat them at their own game. Behind those household walls, we create online classrooms. In those closed physical spaces, we unfold endless digital opportunities. I am not here to make commercial pitches or product recommendations.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  6. “The secret to a stable Afghanistan, a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan, is no secret at all; it is educated girls. Educated girls who become educated women who raise more educated girls and boys. Educated girls who become educated women, independent women, women who chart their own course, a course that elevates their families and their nation and the world. All of us know that international borders do not contain the threat of extremism. But neither do they contain the benefits brought by those women and girls. Those are benefits that the whole world can share. And it begins with education and the girls who fight for it. The rising spiral starts in the classroom. The virtuous circle carries a society to its absolute potential. What can we do, all of us here today, to ensure that it will always spin? I have two recommendations.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  7. “I say to all of us assembled here today — nations that share borders with Afghanistan, that have fought wars within Afghanistan and that work in public and private to find a path forward for Afghanistan — that their histories and approaches are different, but ultimately their interests are the same. They want what I want. I feel safe in saying that it is what every Afghan woman and man wants. What we want is summed up in a single word. That word is “stability.” And what makes that word possible is education. Everything spirals up from the schoolroom. Everything. Economic prosperity. Improved public health. A replanting of the soil in which extremism grows, replacing the seeds of hate with the hope and possibility that comes when girls are given the opportunity to learn, when girls are given the certainty that they matter.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  8. “My school, SOLA, forced into exile, is thriving in Rwanda, a nation that has been such an extraordinary host. We have just concluded our admissions season for the new school year, which will begin this fall. Historically, we have never received more than 300 applications in any given year. But not this year; this year we received nearly 2,000 applications from students in Afghan communities spread across the world. Two thousand Afghan girls. Two thousand Afghan families. Two thousand fires in the darkness. And each one represents the unquenchable and unconquerable desire for access to the basic human right of education. It is our task, the world’s task, to ensure that those flames never go out.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  9. “I did not ever think that the Taliban would be in the position to bring back the darkness I lived in as a child in the 1990s — a child attending secret schools run by brave women in Kabul, a child living in fear because I was an Afghan girl, one of many, who wanted an education. Nothing more than that; we just wanted to go to school. And for that our families and our teachers risked everything — I mean everything — so that we could learn. What I say to the Council today I say because I stand on the shoulders of those giants of my childhood. I am the inheritor of the bravery of Afghan women, and men too, who kindled fires in the darkness of our nation as the world’s attention drifted away. Those fires are burning even now. Secret schools have reopened in Kabul and in the provinces.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source

  10. “Ms. Basij-Rasikh: I am glad to have this opportunity to speak to the members of the Security Council today. My name is Shabana Basij-Rasikh. I am the Head of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA). We were based in Kabul from 2008 through 2021, and we have been operating SOLA in Rwanda since August 2021 and the return of the Taliban. We educate Afghan girls at the secondary level, up through high school. To my knowledge, we are the only legally operating school that is doing that anywhere on the planet. I did not ever think that I would have to make a statement like that during my lifetime.”

    2023-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9354 (2023) · source