Education campaigner and Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai has urged world leaders to use major summits in 2015 to improve the opportunities for people around the world to go to school.
The 17-year-old activist is helping to launch the action/2015 campaign, which is calling for progress in international talks aimed at putting in place new development goals and a deal to tackle climate change.
She said: ” People globally want an end to injustice, poverty and illiteracy. Our world is interconnected and youth are ready and mobilised more than ever to see real change take place
“Together, we are demanding our leaders take action in 2015 and we must all do our part. I will continue to work tirelessly to call on world leaders to seize this opportunity to guarantee a free, quality primary and secondary education for every child.
“That is my goal and I hope that my voice will be heard as it is the voice of millions of children who want to go to school.”
The action/2015 campaign, involving more than 1,000 organisations around the world, claimed almost a billion extra people face extreme poverty if leaders duck key decisions on poverty, inequality and climate change due to be taken at two crucial United Nations summits in New York and Paris.
The new calculation released by the action/2015 coalition shows that the number of people living in extreme poverty – on less than 1.25 dollars a day (82p) – could be reduced from over a billion to 360 million by 2030.
