Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai
A Pakistani Activist for female education and the youngest ever Nobel prize laureate.
She is known for human rights advocacy especially education of women in her native Swat Valley in Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at
banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement. She was a former blogger for BBC Urdu. Has won
awards such as Nobel Peace Prize and Simone de Beauvoir Prize.
She was born on July 12, 1997. She’s twenty years old. She was born in Mingora, Pakistan to proud parents Ziauddin and Torpekai Yousafzai.
She has two siblings. Her family runs a chain of schools in the region. Her father named her after Malalai, a Pashtun Heroine. Welcoming a baby
girl is not always a cause for celebration in Pakistan but her father determined to give Malala every opportunity that a boy would have.
Ziauddin, an educator, promises that Malala will go to school and be treated with equality in his home. Thoughts humanitarian works. Malala
was particularly inspired by her father’s Malala grows up in Swat Valley, sometimes called the “Switzerland of Asia” for its beautiful mountains,
forests, rivers and breath-taking sunsets. From an early age, Malala shares Ziauddin’s love of learning. She spends her childhood playing outside
and exploring new worlds in books. In 2007, Taliban militants take control of Swat. They banned many things like owning a television and
playing music and enforced harsh punishments, including public executions for citizens who defy their orders. In December of 2008, Taliban
issues an edict banning girls from going to school. In early 2009, when she was 11 or 12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for BBC Urdu
detailing her life during the Taliban occupation of Swat. She wrote using the pen name “Gul Makai” to protect her identity. The following
summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. She rose in
prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by activist
Desmond Tutu.
In the afternoon of 9 October 2012, Malala was injured after a Taliban gunman attempted to murder her. She has been shot in the head. She
remained unconscious, in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but later her conditions improved enough to be sent to the
Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK. The murder in 2013 that she may have become the most famous teenager in the world. Since
recovering, Yousafzai become a prominent education activist. Based out of Birmingham, she founded the Malala Fund. In 2013 she co-authored
I am Malala an international bestseller. In 2014 she was announced as the co-recipient of the 201 Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle against the
suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Aged 17 at the time, she became the youngest ever
Nobel prize laureate. In 2017, she was awarded honorary Canadian citizenship and became the youngest person to address the House of
Commons of Canada.