Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai highlighted the global crisis of girls’ education, stressing the need for collective action to ensure that every girl has access to schooling. "We should begin by recognising what we are up against, a crisis that holds our economy back by hundreds of billions in lost growth, a crisis harming the health, safety and security of our people," Malala said while speaking on the second day of "International Conference on Girls' Education in Muslim Communities: Challenges and Opportunities" on Sunday. The federal capital hosted the two-day conference that brought together global experts, educators to address issues surrounding girls' education in Muslim countries. Pakistan faces its own severe education crisis, with more than 22 million children out of school, according to government figures, one of the highest numbers in the world. Malala stressed "if we don’t tackle this crisis, our society will not thrive as it should". "We will fail to live up to Islam’s fundamental values of seeking knowledge." This conference, she said, is an encouraging first step. "But we can only have an honest and serious conversation about girls' educations, if we call out the worst violations of it." The event was snubbed by Afghanistan's Taliban government, as Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told that Islamabad had extended an invitation to Kabul, "but no one from the Afghan government was at the conference". Since returning to power in 2021, the Afghan Taliban government has imposed an austere version of religious law that the United Nations has called "gender apartheid". Their curbs have shut women and girls out of secondary school and university education, as well as many government jobs, and seen them sequestered out of many aspects of public life. Muhammad Al Issa, a Saudi cleric and secretary general of the Muslim World League — which has backed the summit — said "religion is no grounds for blocking girls from school". Meanwhile, Pakistan is facing its own severe education crisis, with more than 22 million children out of school, according to government figures, one of the highest numbers in the world. Malala said that girls in a number of Muslim countries, including Yemen and Sudan, are living under dire circumstances, facing poverty, violence and forced marriages. "In Afghanistan, an entire generation of girls is robbed of their future. This conference will not be serving its purpose if we don’t talk about the education of Afghan girls," she said, adding, "The Taliban-ruled country is the only one in the world where girls are completely barred from education." Malala was shot in the face by the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2012 when she was a schoolgirl, amid her campaigning for female education rights. Militancy was widespread in the region at the time as the war between the Afghan Taliban and Nato forces raged across the border in Afghanistan. Malala was evacuated to the United Kingdom after her attack and went on to become a global advocate for girls' education and, at the age of 17, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. Her activism earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, and she has since become a global advocate for women and girls' education rights.