I'M Only A Child. Wanda Montanelli
open to total change to achieve the dream of many little girls: a society where everyone has rights. A society freed of poverty and the need to sell its own children.
Khadija, also a child bride, before she became a successful film director
Khadija Al-Salami, was born in 1966 in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. At 11 years old she was forced to marry a man of thirty, but did not accept what she experienced as an abuse; and it was, despite her tribe and her family considering marriages between little girls and adults of even thirty or forty years older, legitimate and normal.
The child refused to have sex with her husband and he returned her to her family, as if she were damaged goods.
One day Khadija plucked up all her courage and decided to be the protagonist of her own life, to get divorced and choose to make herself a better person, possibly a happy one.
She ran away from her husband, went to an association for the protection of women, which helped her find work at a local TV station. It was the start of her recovery, her entrance into a work environment that she liked very much and that was to mark the course of her studies, her work and her success as a director.
A providential scholarship, won at 16, helped her achieve her objectives. She went to study in the United States and graduated with top marks in Film Production and Directing.
Then she went to live in France, where she began her career as a documentary filmmaker. She has made dozens of films on the role of Yemeni women and girls.
There have been many rewards in recognition of her commitment in defence of child brides. She was nominated as a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by Frédérick Mitterrand, Minister of Culture and Communication at that time. She has received accolades from many institutions including the Foreign Legion.
Her film "I am Nujood, age 10 and divorced" won an award at the International Film Festival in Dubai in 2014.
Khadija Al-Salami, is the first female Yemeni film director and stands for the commitment and courage of the women of her country. She is an example for all the girls who do not wish to submit to cruel, old fashioned, rural customs which out of ignorance trample their basic rights to live in freedom without being abused.
Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Prize girl
Malala is convinced that girls are entitled to an education. She was ten years old when the Swat valley, the District of Pakistan where she lived, was attacked by the Taliban that abolished the right to study with the closure of many schools, including her own.
Malala described life under Taliban rule in a BBC blog using the pseudonym Gul Makai. It was 1999. The girl began several collaborations with major newspapers, including the "New York Times", where she expressed her disagreement with Taliban rule, opposed to education for all Pakistani citizens, especially women.
She on the contrary loudly affirmed during interviews: "I want to go to school, I want to play, listen to music, sing!".
In 2012, she became a Taliban target.
"Which one of you is Malala Yousafzai?” was the question she heard, but didn’t have time to answer before two gun shots hit her head. Two armed men had boarded the school bus that was taking her home, with the intention of killing her for having written in her Urdu blog that women have a right to education.
Malala’s topics were considered obscene by the terrorists who claimed responsibility for the attack with these phrases: "This is a new chapter of obscenity which we must put an end to… she has become a symbol of western culture in the area, which she has openly touted… she considers Obama her ideal leader. Let this be a lesson to her".5
In the telephone claim to responsibility for the attack, Ehsanulla, the Taliban spokesman, threatened a new ambush if Malala survived.
Malala indeed hovered between life and death, but she managed to survive. She was transferred to a hospital in Great Britain and recovered. She then decided to remain in the U.K. with her family, to continue her studies and devote herself to her campaign for girls education.
She's tough. She was brought up with a good education at home. Her father Ziauddin, a poet, and a teacher at the Khushal Public School, is of a progressive and emancipated mentality. He has always taught her the value of education ever since she was little and has shown a desire, on several occasions, to see his daughter go into politics one day.
The confidence Malala’s father had in his daughter’s talent encouraged the girl to engage in social activities which she divulged through blogs and the net. So she began to receive awards and new assignments.
She won the National Youth Peace Prize, conferred on her by the Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and was subsequently nominated for the International Children Peace Prize.
On 12 July 2013, on the occasion of her 16th birthday, she wore a shawl that had once belonged to Benazir Bhutto, to speak at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York and made an appeal for the right of every boy and every girl to education.
In November 2013 Malala was awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
President Martin Schulz defined her as 'a global icon of the fight for girls’ education".
Moved, Malala said: "I hope that through our unity and our determination we can achieve our goals and help the 57 million children who expect something from us, who do not want an iPhone, xbox, PlayStation or chocolate, but just want a book and a pen."
Malala’s growth programme was set to achieve its highest levels, when beaming, in 2014, she announced on Twitter that she had been admitted to Oxford University: "I’m very excited," she wrote. She was happy to achieve her dream of being able to study. On her website www.malala.org, through a non-profit organisation, she collects funds for educational programmes throughout the world.
On 10 October 2014 Malala was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi. She was seventeen years old and the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize for the struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.
The story of Aberash. The courage to change
Aberash was 14-years-old, a teenager, when she was kidnapped by a 29-year-old farmer who took her to a hut and brutally raped her.
The man’s intention was to force her into marriage. He hoped to get her pregnant and make use of the rule derived from telefa, which according to ancient tradition makes kidnapping socially acceptable when the misdeed is followed by a wedding to put things right.
The girl, however, had no intention of yielding to such an imposition, nor to overcoming the affront she had suffered.
She was left alone in the hut and when her kidnapper left, promising to return soon, she realised there was a gun in the house. It belonged to her tormentor who used to hang it on a hook. Aberash, who hated that prison, took the gun and fled.
Her kidnapper returned home and realised that the girl was not there, so he looked for her with some of his friends. He found her and tried to grab her, but she wriggled free, then she fired the gun and killed him.
The story took place in 1996, in Ethiopia, in a rural area, many hours journey away from the capital Addis Ababa.
Aberash was accused of murder. She had the entire village against her, including the kidnapper’s mother who found it natural to abduct a girl to then marry her. "It’s something everybody does – she said – because it’s part of our tradition".
The trial ended two years later with an acquittal for legitimate defence, and the case of Aberash gave rise in Ethiopia, to a provision which considers anyone who kidnaps a woman, for the purpose of forcing her to accept a remedial marriage, as an outlaw; even more so if the case involves a child.
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