MALALA YOUSAFZAI

 

MALALA YOUSAFZAI (b. 1997)

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Yousafzai became an advocate for girls’ education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book, I Am Malala.

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997 in Mingora, Pakistan. Although it was not always easy to raise a girl child in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai’s father insisted that she received all of the same opportunities afforded to boy children. Her father was a teacher and education advocate that ran a girls’ school in their village. Due to his influence, Yousafzai was passionate about knowledge from a very young age, and she would often waddle into her father’s classes before she could even talk. Malala Yousafzai attended a school that her father, educator Ziauddin Yousafzai, had founded. However, by the time she was ten years old, Taliban extremists began to take control of the Swat Valley and many of her favorite things were banned. Girl’s education was specifically targeted by the Taliban and by the end of 2008 they had destroyed over 400 schools. At eleven years old, Yousafzai decided to stand up to the Taliban. In September 2008 Malala gave a speech in Peshawar. The title of her talk was, ‘How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?’

In early 2009, when she was just 11 years old, Yousafzai began blogging for the BBC about living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education. In order to hide her identity, she used the name Gul Makai. However, she was revealed to be the BBC blogger in December of that year. With a growing public platform, Malala continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an education. Over the next few years, she and her father began speaking out on behalf of girls’ education in the media. They campaigned for Pakistani girls’ access to a free quality education. Her activism resulted in a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011. That same year, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Malala and her family learned that the Taliban had issued a death threat against her because of her activism. Though Malala was frightened for the safety of her father - an anti-Taliban activist - she and her family initially felt that the fundamentalist group would not actually harm a child.

On October 9, 2012, when 15-year-old Malala was riding a bus with friends on their way home from school, a masked gunman boarded the bus and demanded to know which girl was Malala. When her friends looked toward Malala, her location was given away. The gunman fired at her, hitting Malala in the left side of her head; the bullet then travelled down her neck. Two other girls were also injured in the attack.

Nine months after being shot by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai gave a speech at the United Nations on her 16th birthday in 2013. Malala highlighted her focus on education and women’s rights, urging world leaders to change their policies. Following the attack, Malala said that ‘the terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born.’

At Malala Yousafzai’s 2013 speech at the United Nations, Secretary - General Ban Ki-moon pronounced July 12th - Yousafzai's birthday - 'Malala Day' in honor of the young leader’s activism to ensure education for all children.

In October 2013, the European Parliament awarded Malala Yousafzai the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in acknowledgment of her work.

That same year she published her autobiography entitled, “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.”

In December of 2014, Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. At age seventeen, she became the youngest person to be named a Nobel laureate; she received the award along with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

In 2014, Yousafzai and her father established the Malala Fund to internationally support and advocate for women and girls.  Since then, Yousafzai has continued to advocate for the rights of women and girls. The Malala Fund advocates for quality education for all girls by funding education projects internationally, partnering with global leaders and local advocates, and pioneering innovative strategies to empower young women.

In April 2017, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Yousafzai as a U.N. Messenger of Peace to promote girls education. The appointment is the highest honor given by the United Nations for an initial period of two years.

(https://www.biography.com/activist/malala-yousafzai)