[Congressional Bills 113th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3583 Introduced in House (IH)]

113th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                H. R. 3583

To expand the number of scholarships available to Pakistani women under 
             the Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           November 21, 2013

Ms. Ros-Lehtinen (for herself, Ms. Granger, and Mrs. Lowey) introduced 
  the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 
                                Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 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) On July 12, 2013, Malala celebrated her 16th birthday 
        by delivering a speech before the United Nations General 
        Assembly in which she said, ``So let us wage a glorious 
        struggle against illiteracy, poverty, and terrorism. Let us 
        pick up our books and our pens. They are the most powerful 
        weapons. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can 
        change the world. Education is the only solution.''.
            (6) 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.''.
            (7) 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.''.
            (8) 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.''.
            (9) 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.''.
            (10) 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.''.
            (11) The United States provides critical foreign assistance 
        to Pakistan's education sector to improve access to and the 
        quality of basic and higher education.
            (12) 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.
            (13) Fifty percent of the 974 Merit and Needs-Based 
        Scholarships awarded during fiscal year 2013 were awarded to 
        Pakistani women. Historically, only 25 percent of such 
        scholarships have been awarded to women.
            (14) The United Nations declared July 12 as ``Malala 
        Day''--a global day of support for and recognition of Malala's 
        bravery and courage in promoting women's education.
            (15) 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.
            (16) 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.
            (17) Pakistani civil society organizations collected almost 
        2,000,000 signatures from Pakistanis on a petition dedicated to 
        Malala's cause of education for all.

SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

    (a) In General.--It is the sense of Congress that--
            (1) every individual should have the opportunity to pursue 
        an education;
            (2) every individual, regardless of gender, should have the 
        opportunity to pursue an education without fear of 
        discrimination; and
            (3) educational exchanges promote institutional linkages 
        between the United States and Pakistan.
    (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.--Using funding made available under section 6, the 
Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development 
(referred to in this Act as the ``USAID Administrator'') shall increase 
the number of scholarships to women under the Merit and Needs-Based 
Scholarship Program (referred to in this Act as the ``Program'') during 
each of the calendar years 2013 through 2015 over the level awarded to 
women in calendar year 2011.
    (b) Limitations.--
            (1) Criteria.--The additional scholarships available under 
        subsection (a) may only be awarded in accordance with other 
        scholarship eligibility criteria already established by USAID.
            (2) Academic disciplines.--Additional scholarships 
        authorized under 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 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, including a breakdown by gender;
            (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. FUNDING.

    Of the amounts authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2014 
pursuant to title I of the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 
2009 (22 U.S.C. 8411 et seq.), $3,000,000 shall be made available for 
scholarships authorized under section 4(a).
                                 <all>