Alumni News & Notes
Faryal Khan Niazi, Ed.M.'94, Ed.D.'05: Found Her Feet at the UN
by Lewis I. Rice
As a girl growing up in a rural village in Pakistan, Faryal Khan Niazi, Ed.M.'94, Ed.D.'05, saw how the United Nations could change people's lives. The UN provided some rural communities with clean schools stocked with basic learning materials, for instance, and a health care center that offered safe and reliable medical treatment.
Niazi dreamed of someday working for an organization like the UN and changing people's lives herself. That dream came true -- she now works for a specialized agency within the UN -- thanks to education. It's a lesson she remembers as she helps people in similar circumstances all over the world fulfill their own dreams.
"When I think of the young girls and boys I played with as a child, I was privileged to have a good education," Niazi said. "I feel because of the education I had, doors kept opening for me while my childhood friends or my cousins who are still back home never had the same opportunities."
Initially Niazi worked for another international group, the World Bank, researching issues of inclusion in the educational system. Since 1995, she's been at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where she developed the agency's Programme on Educational Governance at Local Levels.
Based in the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, which offers technical assistance to developing nations and promotes international cooperation, Niazi has focused on decentralization and community participation in education. She cites an example in Tanzania: A recent education policy encourages parents to participate in schools, such as making meals or substituting for absent teachers.
Such initiatives offer political empowerment at local levels and give women a voice, she says, something she can appreciate coming from her background.
"As I was finding my own voice as a woman from a developing country," said Niazi, "I was drawn to these issues of participation, democratic governance, equality, and challenging the status quo in providing equal opportunities for all to participate."
Her voice became stronger through her experience at HGSE, she said. After going to college and earning her first master's degree in Pakistan, Niazi came to Cambridge. She had so much to learn that the experience was sometimes overwhelming, she said, but "it was also part of my self development and finding my own feet as a woman."
She was drawn to UNESCO, she said, for its commitment to improve education in developing countries. Recently named a program specialist with UNESCO's National Education Support Strategy group, Niazi works with member states to identify gaps in education and areas that need UNESCO's support. She also serves as principal editor for an upcoming volume of Prospects, UNESCO's journal of education.
In addition, Niazi recently returned to her home country for a six-month stint working as technical advisor to the minister of education on educational decentralization reforms. She traveled throughout the country working with local people, and her native status helped her gather in-depth information, she says. At the same time, she's traveled around the world, including Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, collaborating with regional UNESCO offices on local education policy.
"It's a huge learning experience for me," she said, "and I always want to take back that learning with me."
Lewis Rice is a freelance writer who lives in Arlington, Mass.
About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Winter 2007 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Photograph courtesy of Faryal Khan Niazi
