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I believe that it is girls' human rights to go to school to be educated, minimum, until they are 18.

One of the things we have to remember about the poorest countries in the world is that parents, extremely poor parents, are making the choice of whether to send their girls to school. And they are struggling with lack of water, lack of firewood, and lack of care for their youngest children. And those burdens fall on the girls.

The prevailing view was that girls were outside of school because of the resistance of families to their education. But when I visited a local village, what everyone told me - the chiefs, the parents, the children - was that girls weren't in school because it was the boys that had a better chance of getting paid work in the future.

Across the globe, disadvantaged children are not living up to their potential because if they attend school at all, the schools are usually not designed to meet their extra needs.

Some parents do not send their children to school because they don't know its importance at all.

What we know is that when girls don't go to school, they earn lower salaries. They get married earlier. They have higher infant and maternal mortality rates. And they're more likely to contract HIV, less likely to immunize their children.

We cannot allow our kids not to have an educational opportunity.

When kids start school, families often have little choice over where they can go. Sometimes, children are forced into a failing school simply because their parents live in a certain district, and that school is the only option.

Boys are lacking in female skills, dropping out of schools and ending up in jails and unemployed because they lack these skills.

In many parts of the world, especially Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorism, war and conflict stop children to go to their schools. We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering.