Angry Birds Get Angrier

Today the Angry Birds are a little bit angrier. The characters that have become a worldwide gaming phenomenon are flapping even more furiously because 58million children are not in school and learning. Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish creator of Angry Birds, has added a huge boost to the #UpFor School campaign by launching a new tournament where players are asked to sign the petition going to global leaders. It demands that every child has the right to go to school and already has the support of seven million people worldwide.
Danny Lawson/PA Wire

Today the Angry Birds are a little bit angrier. The characters that have become a worldwide gaming phenomenon are flapping even more furiously because 58million children are not in school and learning.

Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish creator of Angry Birds, has added a huge boost to the #UpForSchool campaign by launching a new tournament where players are asked to sign the petition going to global leaders.

It demands that every child has the right to go to school and already has the support of seven million people worldwide.

I couldn't possibly reveal how many levels of the game I've completed. Let me just say I'm in the top four in my family!

But one thing is clear - bringing together new and innovative partnerships are crucial if the voices of young people are to be heard. Angry Birds games have been downloaded more than three billion times - meaning that in some countries the game has been downloaded more times than the size of the population.

It is the latest phase in the bid to make #UpForSchool the largest petition in history - a message no world leader can ignore. The current holder of this title is the Jubilee 2000 Drop The Debt campaign which I was proud to support.

But this current campaign has one big difference. It is not the western world that is delivering the biggest number of signatures - they are, in fact, coming from countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Liberia, Nigeria and India.

And it is not political organisations or International NGOs that are doing the hard work on the ground but small, brave and determined local campaigning groups such as Indonesia's child-empowerment groups in the districts of Dompu and Grobogan, Uganda's child-rights clubs and India's Bachpan Bachao Andolan.

That is why the petition was launched at a youth rally, in Kibera - Africa's largest urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Here 5,000 young people came together to show their support for universal education led by Kennedy Odede - a youth leader who has gained international praise for his work to get girls into school.

Many established organisations have also backed the campaign. Muslim Aid has shown extraordinary commitment to the cause as have the Salvation Army, Rotary Club, Mary's Meals and Pakistan's Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi.

Avaaz, the online campaigning community, has mobilised one million of its members who now stand #UpForSchool as well as anti-slavery campaign network Walk Free who know that children out of school are more at risk of slavery and being trafficked.

As the petition gains traction around the world, more than 100 youth-led rallies and events have taken place in locations as diverse as the DRC, Beirut, Oslo and Pakistan - where 1,000 girls joined together to show their support.

Rallies have been planned and organised by Global Youth Ambassadors recruited by A World At School. These courageous young people - nearly 1,000 of them in 85 countries - are spearheading the drive to collect millions more signatures in their countries and then sharing their experiences and tactics with each other online.

The shape of the year-long campaign reflects the new reality in the fight for universal education. It is now a civil rights struggle led by boys and girls who are coming forward to claim what is rightfully theirs - a fundamental human right to go to school.

And they are leading the charge because they experience first-hand how the fight for universal education is bound up with ingrained injustice against children.

It is bound by ending child marriage, which takes 15million girls out of school every year, child labour which deprives 15million under 14s of their right to education and child trafficking which sees 500,000 girls disappear from their own homes every year.

And it is bound by the sheer level of discrimination against girls which has led Nobel Prize winners Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi and Desmond Tutu to sign the petition.

In the 1950s the world fought against colonialism, in the 1960s we fought for black civil rights and in the 1970s and 1980s we fought to end apartheid. Now we find that it is children, the most vulnerable in our society, who are fighting for justice.

In emergencies and conflict zones 22million children currently go without any schooling. It used to be said that the only international language people ever understood was the cry of a child but now it seems that this is perhaps not the case.

Now young people themselves are speaking to us. They are doing so through the #UpForSchool petition and leading the demand for change and when one of those brave youth ambassadors reveals the latest petition numbers at an education summit in Oslo on July 6 and 7 we should pay attention.

They are taking the fight to a whole new level.

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