Opportunity key to future of region

 
So when the leading human rights lawyer and wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaks about the Asian University for Women (AUW), she pulls no punches defending the institution’s mission.
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This is not a university for Bangladesh, but for the region,” she says. “It is unashamedly elitist in attracting the best girls from the region who would not have the opportunity otherwise.”

 

Later this month, Blair joins University of Western Ontario President Amit Chakma and dozens of international leaders in a landmark visit to the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Bangladesh for a three-day symposium entitled “Imagining Another Future for Asia.” Blair and Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh, serve as co-chairs for the event.

 

Many of the discussions will centre on expanding opportunities for these young women. And perhaps there is no better Western world evangelist for that cause than Blair.

 

She has parlayed her extensive travels in the region into a platform for women’s rights globally. At AUW, she established the Cherie Blair Fellowships in 2009 given to students who demonstrate extraordinary leadership traits. Each fellowship covers educational and living costs, including one year at the pre-collegiate Access Academy and five years at the university.

 

“The individual stories are so compelling. You go to Asia it is two different places,” she says. “There are incredible success stories for women and yet they are the exception. … You have the potential for women to achieve everything, but a culture that doesn’t let them develop how they should.”Blair traveled with her husband to Afghanistan soon after the Taliban was removed. There, she met with countless girls, each with compelling stories and cut off from even the basic educational opportunities. “I met these girls who are so hungry for knowledge,” she says. In order to help, she tried to get scholarships for many of them in London, U.K. But there were challenges.

 

“The problem is this: You take the girls out of this environment; they never return. You can’t blame them for that,” Blair stresses. “But we need to see in this region that women’s education is taken seriously. They were very keen that you don’t take anyone out of the region who has any talent.”

 

Many parents in the region don’t want their girls going to a Western university, exposing them to a wildly different universe. AUW provides an alternative.

 

“It’s sort of a good staging post, if you will, to allow the girls to develop in an environment not so different from where they come from,” Blair says. “Except that it is challenging in a way they are not used to.”

 

Blair subscribes to a sort-of big picture ‘trickle down’ theory with regard to internationalization and education. You educate key people from a community, “its stars,” and then these people, in turn, return to their communities and give back. Not so much creating a ‘brain drain’ as a ‘brain reservoir.’

 

“The people who really bring a country out are a middle class, and you have to build up that. This is one way to do just that,” she says.

 

Not everyone would agree.

 

Habibul Haque Khondker, a Zayed University (UAE) professor, refuses to acknowledge ‘brain drain’ in a global marketplace instead preferring the term ‘brain in circulation.’ “A brain drain,” he contends, “is better than brain in the drain.”

 

Mamun Rashid, a former Citi Bangladesh executive and India Daily Star columnist, agrees. “We need voices that will speak for Bangladesh in the international forums, and who can do that job better than this expatriate workforce?” he wrote last week. “Reverse brain drain will take place automatically, as seen in case of India, but you cannot blackmail a talented person to compromise his global career with a noble emotion like patriotism.”

 

These differing opinions resonate locally.

 

Given our own ambitions about internationalization, we speak of recruiting and educating, but don’t often discuss the power of returning these students to their homeland where a Western education truly resonates. If we truly want to make a global impact, Blair points out, recruiting and retaining these students in London, or even Ontario, may do more harm than good.

 

A relationship with AUW, she contends, might be a good start for a stronger Western and better world.

 

“This is an experiment, a model,” Blair says of AUW. “The 21st century has to be the time where we make an effort to ensure men and women achieve equality. In two-thirds of the world that isn’t happening. We don’t achieve it anywhere, but we are doing better in some countries.

 

“To unashamedly focus on the stars of tomorrow in this region, despite their condition, their poverty, is the future.”