ABSTRACT
It is widely acknowledged within the human rights and peace movements that, in accordance with international standards, education is a fundamental human right and educational opportunities equal to those of men are essential to women’s realization of all other human rights. In that the human security framework proposed as the foundation of this volume asserts gender equality to be essential to its achievement, we hold that universal education is a basic component of the human needs that comprise the wellbeing integral to our concept of security. Denial or destruction of opportunities for education to women and girls is a denial of their human security and that of their communities and nations. Destruction of schools is a means to thwart democracy as well as to deny fundamental needs and therefore must be attended to as threat to human security. This article demonstrates that such threats, when they derive from narrow, distorted, sexist interpretations of traditional religion that conflate masculinity with patriarchal power and control, manifest the hegemonic masculinity that we argue is at the core of the war system and human insecurity. Clearly the imperative of universal education and concepts of masculinity that oppose it form essential realms of inquiry into the nature of and possibilities for human security.
