Egypt building “girl-friendly” schools

Sahar Zeidan Abdel Wareth, who helps her father on the land, could not attend school until she was 12 when a “girl-friendly” school was built near her home in Assiut Province, some 375 km from Cairo, Egypt.

There are thousands of girls like Sahar in poor areas who do not attend school for numerous reasons, including lack of nearby schools, poverty, child labor, perceived low financial returns from education, traditional perceptions of a girl’s role in society, early marriages, and the priority given to boys’ education.

However, thanks to a government and UN-sponsored drive to build over 1,000 “girl-friendly” schools in seven provinces (partly in response to the UN Secretary-General’s Initiative on Girls’ Education launched in October 2000), the situation is changing. Read more in IRIN News online.