[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 120 Introduced in Senate (IS)]
113th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. 120
A bill to expand the number of scholarships available to Pakistani
women under the Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
January 23 (legislative day, January 3), 2013
Mrs. Boxer (for herself and Ms. Landrieu) introduced the following
bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign
Relations
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
A bill to expand the number of scholarships available to Pakistani
women under the Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act'''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:
(1) On October 9, 2012, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was
shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in Pakistan on her way home
from school.
(2) When Malala was 11 years old, she bravely stood up to
the Taliban and wrote a secret blog documenting their crackdown
on women's rights and education in 2009.
(3) Malala's advocacy for women's education made her a
target of the Taliban.
(4) The Taliban called Malala's efforts to highlight the
need for women's education an ``obscenity''.
(5) According to the United Nation's 2012 Education for All
Global Monitoring Report, ``Pakistan has the second largest
number of children out of school [in the world]'' and ``nearly
half of rural females have never been to school.''.
(6) According to a Council on Foreign Relations report
titled ``What Works in Girls' Education'', ``A 100-country
study by the World Bank shows that increasing the share of
women with a secondary education by 1 percent boosts annual per
capita income growth by 0.3 percentage points.''.
(7) According to the World Bank, ``The benefits of women's
education go beyond higher productivity for 50 percent of the
population. More educated women also tend to be healthier,
participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income,
have fewer children, and provide better health care and
education to their children, all of which eventually improve
the well-being of all individuals and lift households out of
poverty. These benefits also transmit across generations, as
well as to their communities at large.''.
(8) According to United Nation's 2012 Education For All
Global Monitoring Report, ``education can make a big difference
to women's earnings. In Pakistan, women with a high level of
literacy earned 95 percent more than women with no literacy
skills.''.
(9) In January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton stated, ``We will open the doors of education to all
citizens, but especially to girls and women . . . We are doing
all of these things because we have seen that when women and
girls have the tools to stay healthy and the opportunity to
contribute to their families' well-being, they flourish and so
do the people around them.''.
(10) The United States provides critical foreign assistance
to Pakistan's education sector to improve access to and the
quality of basic and higher education.
(11) The Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program
administered by the United States Agency for International
Development awards scholarships to academically talented,
financially needy Pakistani students from remote regions of the
country to pursue bachelor's or master's degrees at
participating Pakistani universities.
(12) Twenty-five percent of the 1,807 Merit and Needs-Based
Scholarships awarded to date have been for women, with the goal
of awarding 50 percent of the scholarships for fall 2013
matriculation to women.
(13) The United Nations declared November 10 as ``Malala
Day''--a global day of support for and recognition of Malala's
bravery and courage in promoting women's education.
(14) On December 10, 2012, the United Nations and the
Government of Pakistan launched the ``Malala Fund for Girls'
Education'' to improve girls' access to education worldwide,
with Pakistan donating the first $10,000,000 to the Fund.
(15) The Government of Pakistan has stated that it plans to
open 16 schools for poor children in areas affected by conflict
or natural disasters and name them ``Malala Schools'' after
Malala Yousafzai.
(16) The Government of Pakistan, the United Nations, the
World Bank, and other international organizations have set an
April 2013 deadline to put forward a plan to provide education
for all of Pakistan's school-aged children by the end of 2015.
(17) More than 1,000,000 people around the world have
signed the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education
petition calling on the Government of Pakistan to enroll every
boy and girl in primary school.
(18) Pakistani civil society organizations collected an
additional 1,200,000 signatures from Pakistanis on a petition
dedicated to Malala's cause.
SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
(a) In General.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) education and freedom from discrimination are
fundamental human rights; and
(2) educational exchanges increase people-to-people ties
and promote institutional linkages between the United States
and other countries.
(b) Continued Support for Educational Initiatives in Pakistan.--
Congress encourages the Department of State and the United States
Agency for International Development to continue their support for
initiatives led by the Government of Pakistan and Pakistani civil
society that promote education in Pakistan, especially education for
women.
SEC. 4. MERIT AND NEEDS-BASED SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM.
(a) Expansion.--The USAID Administrator shall increase the number
of scholarships available under the Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship
Program (referred to in this Act as the ``Program'') administered by
the United States Agency for International Development (referred to in
this Act as ``USAID'') during each of the fiscal years 2013 through
2016 by 30 percent compared to the number of scholarships awarded
during fiscal year 2012.
(b) Limitations.--
(1) Women.--The additional scholarships available under
subsection (a) may only be awarded to women, in accordance with
other scholarship eligibility criteria already established by
USAID.
(2) Academic disciplines.--Additional scholarships added by
subsection (a) shall be awarded for a range of disciplines to
improve the employability of graduates and to meet the needs of
the scholarship recipients.
(3) Other scholarships.--The USAID Administrator shall make
every effort to award 50 percent of the scholarships available
under the Program (excluding the additional scholarships
available under subsection (a)) to Pakistani women.
SEC. 5. ANNUAL CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING.
(a) In General.--The USAID Administrator shall designate
appropriate USAID officials to brief the appropriate congressional
committees, not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this
Act, and annually thereafter for the next 3 years, on the
implementation of section 4.
(b) Contents.--The briefing described in subsection (a) shall
include, among other relevant information, for the most recently
concluded fiscal year--
(1) the total number of scholarships that were awarded
through the Program;
(2) the disciplines of study chosen by the scholarship
recipients;
(3) the percentage of the scholarships that were awarded to
students seeking a bachelor's degree or a master's degree,
respectively; and
(4) the percentage of scholarship recipients that
voluntarily dropped out of school or were involuntarily pushed
out of the program for failure to meet program requirements.
SEC. 6. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
(a) Transfer of Security Assistance Funding.--Of the amounts
appropriated for fiscal years 2013 and 2014 pursuant to the
authorization under title II of the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan
Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-73), $400,000 shall be made available in
each of the fiscal years 2013 and 2014 for the Program.
(b) Funding for Additional Scholarships for Pakistani Women.--Of
the amounts appropriated for fiscal years 2015 and 2016 for the purpose
of providing assistance to Pakistan under the Foreign Assistance Act of
1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151 et seq.), $400,000 shall be made available in each
of the fiscal years 2015 and 2016 for the Program.
(c) Availability.--Amounts made available in subsections (a) and
(b) shall remain available until expended.
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