authorDiscover the Best Books Written by Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai, born on 12 July 1997, is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate and the second Pakistani, and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native homeland, Swat, where the Pakistani Taliban have sometimes banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."
The daughter of education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai was born to a Yusufzai Pashtun family in Swat and was named after the Afghan national heroine Malalai of Maiwand. Considering Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Barack Obama, and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work.
In early 2009, when she was 11, she wrote a blog under her pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu to detail her life during the Taliban's occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistan Armed Forces launched Operation Rah-e-Rast against the militants in Swat. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.
On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in Swat District, after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a 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. Still, her condition 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 her. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that she might have become "the most famous teenager in the world.
Weeks after the attempted murder, a group of 50 leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her. Governments internationally denounced the Pakistani Taliban, human rights organizations, and feminist groups. The Pakistani Taliban officials responded to condemnation by further attacking Yousafzai, indicating plans for a possible second assassination attempt, which they felt was justified as a religious obligation. Their statements resulted in further international condemnation.
After her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. She co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organization, in Birmingham, with Shiza Shahid. In 2013, she co-authored I Am Malala, an international bestseller. In 2012, she received Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi of India.
Aged 17 at the time, she was the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. In 2015, she was the subject of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary He Named Me Malala. 2013, 2014, and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured her as one of the most influential people globally. In 2017 she was awarded honorary Canadian citizenship and became the youngest person to address the House of Commons of Canada.
Yousafzai completed her secondary school education at Edgbaston High School, Birmingham in, England, from 2013 to 2017. From there, she won a place at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and undertook three years of study for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). She graduated in 2020.
