Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become “the most prominent citizen” of the country.
On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK. The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that Yousafzai may have become “the most famous teenager in the world”. Weeks after the attempted murder, a group of fifty leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her. The Pakistani Taliban were internationally denounced by governments, human rights organizations and feminist groups. Pakistani Taliban officials responded to condemnation by further denouncing Yousafzai, indicating plans for a possible second assassination attempt, which was justified as a religious obligation. Their statements resulted in further international condemnation.
Following her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation with Shiza Shahid, and in 2013 co-authored I Am Malala, an international best seller. Yousafzai attended Edgbaston High School in England from 2013 to 2017, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford where she was an undergraduate student of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 2020.
—
Photo Credit: JStone / Shutterstock.com