Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai, often referred to mononymously as Malala, 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. On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, she and two other girls were shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism. She 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

About Malala Yousafzai in brief

Summary Malala YousafzaiMalala Yousafzai, often referred to mononymously as Malala, 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. On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, she and two other girls were shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism. She 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. Following her recovery, she became a prominent activist for the right to education. She co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation with Shiza Shahid, and in 2013 co-authored I Am Malala. In 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Kailash Satyarthi of India. Aged 17 at the time, she is the youngest-ever Nobel Prize Laureate. In 2015, She Named Me Malala was a subject of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary He Named Me malala. The 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.

She 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. Her family is Sunni Muslim of Pashtun ethnicity, belonging to the Yusai tribe. Her first name is Malala after Malala Maiwand, a famous Afghan woman warrior from southern Afghanistan. Her parents are Ziauddin and Tor Pekai, a school owner and educational activist and poet, and her younger brothers, Khushal and Atal, her parents, Zushal, and Khalal, are all Pashtuns. Her father is an educational activist himself, who is a famous Pashton poet and school owner. He is the father of Malala’s older brother, Zulqarnain, a well-known English teacher and author. She has a younger sister, Zainab, and a younger brother, Faisal, both of whom are also Pashtsun Muslims. She lives with her parents in a lower-middle-class family in Mingora, Pakistan. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the Pakistani Taliban occupation of Swat. 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.