H. R. 4508 
One Hundred Sixteenth Congress 
of the 
United States of America 
AT THE SECOND SESSION 
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Friday, 
the third day of January, two thousand and twenty 
An Act 
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. 
Congress makes the following findings: 
(1) In late 2008, Malala Yousafzai began making the case 
for access to education for women and girls despite objections 
from the Pakistani Taliban. On October 9, 2012, Malala was 
shot in the head by Pakistani Taliban on her way home from 
school. 
(2) In 2013, Malala Yousafzai and her father Ziauddin 
Yousafzai co-founded the Malala Fund. The Malala Fund works 
to secure 12 years of free, safe, and quality education for 
all girls. Completion of a full 12-year cycle of primary and 
secondary education ensures a pipeline of girls able to pursue 
higher education. 
(3) On July 12, 2013, Malala delivered a speech before 
the United Nations General Assembly calling for expanded 
access to education for women and girls across the globe. She 
said, ‘‘[L]et us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, pov-
erty, and terrorism. Let us pick up our books and our pens. 
They are the most powerful weapons * * *. Education is the 
only solution.’’. 
(4) On October 10, 2014, Malala Yousafzai became the 
co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her ‘‘struggle against 
the suppression of children and young people and for the right 
of all children to education’’. 
(5) According to the United Nations 2016 Global Education 
Monitoring Report, more than 130 million girls worldwide are 
out of school. 15 million girls of primary-school age will never 
enter a classroom. As of 2016, at least 500 million adult women 
across the globe are illiterate. 
(6) According to the World Bank, ‘‘Girls’ education is a 
strategic development priority. Better educated women tend 
to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, 
earn higher incomes, * * * marry at a later age, and enable 
better health care and education for their children, should 
they choose to become mothers. All these factors combined
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can help lift households, communities, and nations out of pov-
erty.’’. 
(7) In 2015, all United Nations Member States, including 
the United States, adopted quality education, including access 
to higher education, and gender equality as sustainable develop-
ment goals to be attained by 2030. One of the education goal 
targets is to ‘‘ensure equal access for all women and men 
to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary edu-
cation, including university’’. 
(8) 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 oppor-
tunity to contribute to their families’’ well-being, they flourish 
and so do the people around them. 
(9) In February 2019, the White House launched the 
Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative to 
advance women’s economic empowerment across the globe and 
reach more than 100,000 women. 
(10) The World Economic Forum ranks Pakistan the second 
lowest among all countries in the world evaluated for gender 
equality. On educational attainment for women, Pakistan is 
ranked the tenth lowest. 
(11) In Pakistan, the rate of higher education enrollment 
beyond high school for girls and women is just 9 percent as 
reported by the World Bank. The global rate is 40 percent. 
Less than 6 percent of women 25 and older in Pakistan attain 
a bachelor’s degree or equivalent as of 2016. 
(12) Factors such as poverty, early marriage, disability, 
ethnicity, and religion can contribute to the lack of educational 
opportunities for women in marginalized communities. 
(13) According to the World Bank, ‘‘Higher education bene-
fits both individuals and society. Economic returns for college 
graduates are the highest in the entire educational system— 
an average 17 percent increase in earnings per year of schooling 
as compared with 10 percent for primary school.’’. 
(14) The United States provides critical foreign assistance 
to Pakistan’s education sector to improve access to and the 
quality of basic and higher education. Since 2010, the United 
States Agency for International Development (referred to in 
this Act as ‘‘USAID’’) has awarded more than 6,000 scholarships 
for young women to receive higher education in Pakistan. 
(15) The Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program 
administered by USAID awards scholarships to academically 
talented, financially needy Pakistani students from all regions, 
including female students from rural areas of the country, 
to pursue bachelor’s or master’s degrees at participating Paki-
stani universities. 
SEC. 3. SENSE OF CONGRESS. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—It is the sense of Congress that— 
(1) every individual should have the opportunity to pursue 
a full cycle of primary, secondary, and higher education; 
(2) every individual, regardless of gender, socio-economic 
status, ethnicity, or religion should have the opportunity to 
pursue an education without fear of discrimination;
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(3) educational exchanges promote institutional linkages 
between the United States and Pakistan; and 
(4) recipients of scholarships referred to in section 4 should 
commit to improving their local communities. 
(b) CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES IN PAKI-
STAN.—Congress encourages the Department of State and USAID 
to continue their support for initiatives led by the Government 
of Pakistan and civil society that promote education in Pakistan, 
especially education for women, in accordance with USAID’s 2018 
Education Policy. 
SEC. 4. MERIT AND NEEDS-BASED SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—The USAID Administrator shall award at 
least 50 percent of the number of scholarships under the Merit 
and Needs-Based Scholarship Program (referred to in this Act as 
the ‘‘Program’’) to women for each of the calendar years 2020 
through 2022. 
(b) LIMITATIONS.— 
(1) CRITERIA.—The scholarships available under subsection 
(a) may only be awarded in accordance with other scholarship 
eligibility criteria already established by USAID. 
(2) ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES.—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. 
(c) LEVERAGING INVESTMENT.—The USAID Administrator shall, 
to the greatest extent practicable, consult with and leverage invest-
ments by the Pakistani private sector and Pakistani diaspora 
communities in the United States as part of USAID’s greater effort 
to improve the quality of, expand access to, and ensure sustain-
ability of education programs in Pakistan. 
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 recipi-
ents; 
(3) the percentage of the scholarships that were awarded 
to students seeking a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree, 
respectively; 
(4) the percentage of scholarship recipients who voluntarily 
dropped out of school or were involuntarily pushed out of the 
program for failure to meet program requirements; and
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(5) the percentage of scholarship recipients who dropped 
out of school due to retaliation for seeking an education, to 
the extent that such information is available. 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.