Background

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan. Mingora is the largest city in the Swat Valley of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan. Yousafzai was the first of three children born to Ziauddin and Tor Pekai Yousafzai.

Education

Yousafzai attended a school that her father, educator Ziauddin Yousafzai, had founded, Khushal Girls High School. After the Taliban began attacking girls' schools in Swat, Yousafzai gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?"

Yousafzai began studying at Oxford University in 2017, graduating in June 2020 with a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics.

Career

In early 2009, when Yousafzai was just 11 years old, she 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, Yousafzai continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an 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.

Yousafzai and her family learned that the Taliban had issued a death threat against her because of her activism. Though Yousafzai 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 Yousafzai 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 Yousafzai. When her friends looked toward Yousafzai, her location was given away. The gunman fired at her, hitting Malala in the left side of her head; the bullet then traveled down her neck. Two other girls were also injured in the attack.

The shooting left Yousafzai in critical condition, so she was flown to a military hospital in Peshawar. A portion of her skull was removed to treat her swelling brain. To receive further care, she was transferred to Birmingham, England.

Once she was in the United Kingdom, Yousafzai was taken out of a medically induced coma. Though she would require multiple surgeries - including repair of a facial nerve to fix the paralyzed left side of her face - she had suffered no major brain damage.

The shooting resulted in a massive outpouring of support for Yousafzai, which continued during her recovery. Unfortunately, the Taliban still considers Yousafzai a target, although Yousafzai remains a staunch advocate for the power of education.

Nine months after being shot by the Taliban, Yousafzai gave a speech at the United Nations on her 16th birthday in 2013. Yousafzai highlighted her focus on education and women's rights, urging world leaders to change their policies.

Following the attack, Yousafzai 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."

Yousafzai also urged action against illiteracy, poverty, and terrorism: "The extremists were, and they are, afraid of books and pens. The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women... Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons."

At 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. At the announcement, Ban said: "Malala chose to mark her 16th birthday with the world. No child should have to die for going to school. Nowhere should teachers fear to teach or children fear to learn. Together, we can change the picture."

In October 2013, the European Parliament awarded Yousafzai the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in acknowledgment of her work. In October 2014, Yousafzai became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, at just 17 years old; she received the award along with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Yousafzai was first nominated for the Nobel in 2013 but did not win. She was renominated in March 2014. In congratulating Yousafzai, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said: “She is (the) pride of Pakistan, she has made her countrymen proud. Her achievement is unparalleled and unequaled. Girls and boys of the world should take lead from her struggle and commitment." Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described Yousafzai as "a brave and gentle advocate of peace who, through the simple act of going to school, became a global teacher.”

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.

Yousafzai was also given honorary Canadian citizenship in April 2017. She is the sixth person and the youngest in the country’s history to receive the honor.

In 2013, Yousafzai and her father launched the Malala Fund, which works to ensure girls around the world have access to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. The fund prioritizes assistance to its Gulmakai Network - a reference to the pseudonym Yousafzai used when she wrote her BBC blog about life in Pakistan under Taliban rule. These countries, including Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey, are where most girls miss out on secondary education.

For her 18th birthday, in July 2015, Yousafzai continued to take action on global education by opening a school for Syrian refugee girls in Lebanon. Its expenses covered by the Malala Fund, the school was designed to admit nearly 200 girls from the ages of 14 to 18. "Today on my first day as an adult, on behalf of the world's children, I demand of leaders we must invest in books instead of bullets," Yousafzai proclaimed in one of the school's classrooms.

That day, she wrote on The Malala Fund website: "The shocking truth is that world leaders have the money to fully fund primary AND secondary education around the world - but they are choosing to spend it on other things, like their military budgets. In fact, if the whole world stopped spending money on the military for just 8 days, we could have the $39 billion still needed to provide 12 years of free, quality education to every child on the planet."

On March 29, 2018, Yousafzai returned to Pakistan for the first time since her brutal 2012 attack. Not long after arriving, she met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, and delivered an emotional speech at his office.

"In the last five years, I have always dreamed of coming back to my country," she said, adding, "I never wanted to leave."

Yousafzai also visited her former home and a military-run cadet college in Mingora during her four-day trip.

Achievements

• Malala Yousafzai spoke out publicly against the prohibition on the education of girls that was imposed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. She gained global attention when she survived an assassination attempt at age 15. In 2014 Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of their efforts on behalf of children's rights.
  
  In October 2015, a documentary about Yousafzai's life was released. HE NAMED ME MALALA, directed by Davis Guggenheim, gave viewers an intimate look into the life of Yousafzai, her family, and her commitment to supporting education for girls around the world.
  
  An asteroid, 2010 ML48, was officially named "316201 Malala" after her.

Works

More photos

• book

  • We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World

    (In her book, Nobel Peace Prize winner and New York Times-...)

    2019
  • Malala's Magic Pencil

    (Malala's first picture book will inspire young readers ev...)

    2017
  • I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

    (When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakis...)

    2013

Religion

Malala remains a devout Muslim while condemning the religious extremism of the Taliban.

Politics

Malala Yousafzai is a socialist. "I am convinced," Malala wrote in a message sent to Pakistan’s International Marxist Tendency (IMT), that "socialism is the only answer, and I urge all comrades to struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation."

Views

Malala Yousafzai calls herself a feminist. In 2014, Yousafzai and her father established the Malala Fund to internationally support and advocate for women and girls. Through her charity, she met with Syrian refugees in Jordan, young women students in Kenya, and spoke out in Nigeria against the terrorist group Boko Haram that abducted young girls to stop them from going to school. 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.

Malala Yousafzai has criticized the objectification of women in pop music. She questioned how women are perceived and said that female musicians appear to have just accepted it.

"What I get a bit angry about is the image of women," she told The Observer Magazine. "It gets quite difficult for me when I listen to pop music. I don't often understand the words, but when someone translates them to me, I think, 'What is this song representing? That women are just there to be treated like objects?'"

"Most of the time they do not even make sense. And the thing is that most of the female artists seem to have accepted all this. But they have a role to play."

Quotations: "If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don't get it, it's not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see the education of every child."

Personality

Malala relates to Indian culture the most - from food to clothes - everything is quite similar but more stylish and grand. She has a few Indian suits that I wear on occasions. She loves draping shawls. The way Malala put it on her head is the way girls in the SWAT region wear their shawls. She has about 12 shades that she likes to mix and match. Malala loves pink clothes and accessories a lot.

Interests

• Watching films with friends and going to restaurants

• Politicians

  Mahatma Gandhi

• Writers

  Khaled Hosseini, non-fiction novels

• Artists

  Shah Rukh Khan

• Sport & Clubs

  Cricket

• Athletes

  Sachin Tendulkar, Shahid Afridi

• Music & Bands

  Honey Singh

Connections

Malala Yousafzai isn't married.

Father:

Ziauddin Yousafzai

Mother:

Tor Pekai Yousafzai

colleague:

Kailash Satyarthi

References

• ​​​​​​​Malala Yousafzai on Twitter