[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.
                                 <all>