On April 3, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved, by unanimous consent, the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act (H.R. 3583). The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved its version of the bill (S. 120) in September 2013 (see The Source, 9/20/13).
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), would increase the number of scholarships available to Pakistani women under the Merit- and Needs-Based Scholarship Program administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The legislation would set aside $3 million for the scholarship program from the amount authorized to be appropriated in FY2014 by the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act (P.L. 111-73).
As amended, the bill would require USAID to include, as part of their annual congressional briefing, a report on the percentage of scholarship recipients who dropped out of school due to retaliation for seeking an education. The bill also expresses the sense of Congress that scholarship recipients should commit to serving their local communities.
