The UNESCO Malala Fund for Girls' Right to Education was established in 2012 following the brutal assassination attempt against Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager and activist for girls’ education. It is part of the “Better Life, Better Future Global Partnership for Girls' and Women's Education," aiming to expand girls' access to quality and gender-responsive education and ensure safe learning environments, especially in countries affected by conflict and disaster.

The UNESCO Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education was established in 2012 following the brutal assassination attempt against Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager and activist for girls’ education. It is part of the “Better Life, Better Future” Global Partnership for Girls’ and Women’s Education, aiming to expand girls’ access to quality and gender-responsive education and ensure safe learning environments, especially in countries affected by conflict and disaster. Pakistan initially committed USD 10 million and more than USD 700,000 has been mobilized from other donors, including annual support from CJ Group, a South Korean conglomerate.

The Fund aims to: expand access to education for girls and women, especially those hardest to reach and affected by conflict and disaster; improve the quality and relevance of education, ensuring that content, teaching practices, learning processes and environments are gender-sensitive; and strengthen policy and capacity to ensure safe learning environments. It is helping countries to achieve equal, inclusive and just societies and advance the transformative development agenda outlined in the SDGs, especially SDG 4 on quality education and SDG 5 on gender equality.

The fund is supported by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the CJ Group. Implementing partners include ministries of education, women, health and labour at central, provincial and district levels; NGOs and civil society partners including associations of women, youth, and particular groups (such as indigenous populations); educational institutions including schools, community learning centres, and other non-formal education structures; and media broadcasting agencies including community-based radios for advocacy and community outreach

To date, 10 countries have received support from the Fund and benefited from South-South cooperation. They include Cambodia, Egypt, Guatemala, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania and Viet Nam. The Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education provides opportunities for sharing knowledge and best practices on strengthening girls’ access to quality and gender-responsive education and on ensuring safe learning environments. In Tanzania, for example, more than 2,500 girls benefitted from the creation of safe spaces in 40 secondary schools and 120 teachers and 620 students received training on how to manage these spaces, using tools developed by UNESCO. Eighty-two teachers were also trained in gender-responsive pedagogy, human rights education, anti-bullying and sexual and reproductive health education. Retention has increased among girls at these sites through reductions in teenage pregnancies.

In Mozambique, more than 50 technicians (80 per cent female) have been trained in family literacy and over 580 young women, mothers, caregivers and parents (95 per cent female) have built literacy, language and numeracy skills. Thirteen classes implement regular literacy programmes, benefiting around 475 learners (71 per cent female). In Egypt, UNESCO is enhancing the literacy skills of 940 women and girls and building their life skills for health, livelihoods and citizenship engagement through Community Learning Centres (CLCs). A Training of Trainers programme has been piloted and finalized, and 60 literacy facilitators have been trained from four governorates.

The project has also been developing sustainable knowledge platforms, such as the learning management platform that includes digitized syllabuses for secondary schools installed at the UNESCO/SAMSUNG digital school and accessible to students from four secondary schools (Arash, Loliondo, Soitsambu and Emanyata) in Ngorongoro, Tanzania. It has also led to policy reforms through mainstreaming gender in education planning, management and delivery, and supporting gender norm changes through media interventions. In Viet Nam, for example, the Ministry of Education and Training developed and approved an Action Plan for Gender Equality in the Education Sector for the period 2016-2020.
A new project is starting also in Viet Nam (February 2019) with a focus on ethnic minorities.