As we celebrate International Women’s Day we should be very clear in our course for women empowerment and emancipation as well as academic freedom. Empowering a girl child is to empowering the whole society. Hence we should hold our hands together in fighting for academic freedom as our right, so as to improve literacy of a girl child. Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories.
Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right. Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.
Lets all embrace the rights of a girl child as we celebrate their day.Rights are either God-given as part of the divine plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.
Source: Zimbabwe National Students’ Union (ZINASU)
