Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai Calls for Full Cease-Fire in the Israel-Hamas War
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Latest News: Malala Yousafzai Calls for Full Cease-Fire in the Israel-Hamas War
In a November 24 post on X (formerly Twitter), Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai welcomed the beginning of a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and doubled down on her calls for long-term peace and continued aid. “Tonight, I feel relief for the women, children and young people reunited with their families, and for the pause in the bombardment of Gaza,” she wrote. “We must keep speaking out for [children in Gaza]—for a full ceasefire and more humanitarian aid. The needless suffering must end.”
The 26-year-old began advocating for peace in the region soon after the conflict began on October 7. She witnessed violence while growing up in Pakistan and became a target, herself, surviving an assassination attempt as a teenager, after speaking up against the Taliban’s prohibition on girls’ education. Last month, Yousafzai said she donated $300,000 to three charities helping Palestinians and encouraged the public to sign a petition demanding Israel stop attacking schools and both sides release their child hostages.
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Who Is Malala Yousafzai?
Malala Yousafzai, often known simply as Malala, is a Pakistani girls’ education activist who survived an assassination attempt at age 15 and became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. Yousafzai began advocating for girls’ education when she was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. In October 2012, a gunman shot Yousafzai when she was traveling home from school. The activist survived, became a Nobel laureate at age 17, and continues her work through her international nonprofit, Malala Fund. She has written several books, including the best-selling memoir I Am Malala, and helped produce the 2022 Oscar-nominated documentary short Stranger at the Gate.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Malala Yousafzai
BORN: July 12, 1997
BIRTHPLACE: Mingora, Pakistan
SPOUSE: Asser Malik (2021-present)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer
Early Life and Activism
Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan, located in the country’s northern Swat Valley. For the first few years of her life, Yousafzai’s hometown remained a popular tourist spot that was known for its summer festivals. The area began to change as the Taliban tried to take control.
Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin, is an educator, but her mother, Tor Pekai, was illiterate until she was in her 40s. The couple always supported their daughter’s education. Malala attended a school that her father had founded.
After the Taliban began attacking girls schools in Swat, 11-year-old 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?” In early 2009, Yousafzai 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, her identity was revealed that December.
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. Although Malala 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.
Shot by the Taliban
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 friends looked toward her, Yousafzai was given away. The gunman fired at her, hitting the girl 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, which became her family’s new home.
Once she was in the United Kingdom, Yousafzai was taken out of a medically induced coma. Although 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. In March 2013, she was able to begin attending school in Birmingham.
The shooting resulted in a massive outpouring of support for Yousafzai that continued during her recovery and today. Although the Taliban still considers Yousafzai a target, she remains a staunch advocate for the power of education.
Nearly two years after the attack, Pakistani authorities arrested 10 Taliban militants for their part in the assassination attempt. Most were acquitted in April 2015 due to lack of evidence, meanwhile two men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Ehsanullah Ehsan, the alleged shooter who is also connected to other terrorist activities, was arrested in February 2017 but escaped custody in early 2020.
U.N. Speech on Malala Day
Nine months after being shot by the Taliban, Yousafzai gave a speech at the United Nations on July 12, 2013—her 16th birthday. It was her first speaking in public since the attack. Yousafzai highlighted her primary causes of education and women’s rights, while urging world leaders to introduce peace and prosperity, as well as fund mandatory education for all. She encouraged other activists to continue speaking out and appealed to individuals to end any prejudices they hold:
“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.”
Of the Taliban’s attack, Yousafzai said, “They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed... 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.”
The United Nations declared July 12 “Malala Day” in honor of the young leader’s activism to ensure education for all children. The U.N. Secretary-General at the time, Ban Ki-moon, said at the event: “Malala chose to mark her 16th birthday at the United Nations, celebrating her cause for education... 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.”
Malala Fund
Two months after Yousafzai was shot, UNESCO and the Pakistan government created the Malala Fund for Girls’ Education. Then, in 2013, Yousafzai and her father launched the similarly named nonprofit, Malala Fund, that works to ensure girls around the world have access to 12 years of free and safe education.
The nonprofit primarily supports its Education Champion Network—previously known as its Gulmakai Network, a reference to the pseudonym Yousafzai used when she wrote for the BBC—of local activists in places where many girls don’t receive secondary education. The network has grown to include 10 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Turkey.
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 eight days, we could have the $39 billion still needed to provide 12 years of free, quality education to every child on the planet.”
In January 2018, Apple announced it was partnering with Malala Fund to help provide education to more than 100,000 girls around the world. The company pledged to contribute money and technology, as well as assist with curriculum and policy research.
According to the Malala Fund website, the organization has invested more than $47 million in total across its various programs.
Awards
Yousafzai has received a host of awards and honors to date. Chief among them is the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, which she received along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” Yousafzai, then just 17 years old, became the youngest person—and first Pakistani—to receive the Nobel Peace Prize when the announcement was made in October 2014. It was her second time being nominated for the prestigious award.
In congratulating Yousafzai, then–Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement: “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.” Then–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.”
Additionally, Yousafzai was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize in 2011. The award has since been renamed in her honor as the National Malala Peace Prize. She is also the recipient of:
the 2012 Mother Teresa Memorial Award,
France’s 2013 Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom,
the European Parliament’s 2013 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought,
the 2014 Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and
the 2018 Gleitsman Award from Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership.
She was shortlisted for Time’s Person of the Year in 2012 (the year then-President Barack Obama earned the honor) and named to the Time 100 the following year.
In April 2017, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Yousafzai as a U.N. Messenger of Peace, the youngest in history, to promote girls’ education. The appointment is the highest honor given by the United Nations for an initial period of two years.
That same month, Yousafzai was also given honorary Canadian citizenship. She is the sixth person and the youngest in the country’s history to receive the honor.
I Am Malala, Other Books, and Documentary
Yousafzai has written several books, including the October 2013 memoir I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. It became an international bestseller. The book was abridged in 2014 for a young readers edition and again in an illustrated version for kids as 2018’s Malala: My Story of Standing Up for Girls’ Rights.
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
amazon.com
$15.84
The international activist has published two more children’s books about her life: Malala’s Magic Pencil in October 2017 and My Name Is Malala in October 2022.
Her second book for adults released in 2018. We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World explores Yousafzai’s story as well as the stories of girls she met in her travels to refugee camps in Colombia, Guatemala, Syria, and Yemen.
Yousafzai gave the world more insight into her daily life in the 2015 documentary He Named Me Malala. Directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman), the film gave viewers an intimate look into the life of Yousafzai, her family, and her commitment to supporting education for girls around the world.
In April 2023, Yousafzai and publisher Atria Books announced she is working on a new memoir. Atria described the untitled work as a “breathtaking story of recovery and search of identity, a candid exploration of her coming-of-age in the public spotlight, and an intimate look at her life today.”
Return to Pakistan
Through all her activism, Yousafzai remained committed to her own education. She graduated from Edgbaston High School for Girls in Birmingham, England, in July 2017. She continued her studies at Oxford University that fall.
On March 29, 2018, the Oxford student returned to Pakistan for the first time since her brutal 2012 attack. Not long after arriving, Yousafzai met with then–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. “I never wanted to leave.” Yousafzai also visited her former home and a military-run cadet college in Mingora during her four-day trip.
Recent Years and 2023 Oscars Appearance
In June 2020, Yousafzai graduated from Oxford University with a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. The following March, Apple announced the start of a multiyear programming partnership with the activist. The company stated that Yousafzai and her production company Extracurricular would create original programming across multiple genres for Apple TV+ that draw on her ability to inspire people around the world. “I couldn’t ask for a better partner than Apple to help bring these stories to life. I’m grateful for the opportunity to support women, young people, writers, and artists in reflecting the world as they see it,” she said.
Separately, Yousafzai served as an executive producer on the 2022 short documentary film Stranger at the Gate, which tells the story of how a former U.S. marine planned to commit a terrorist attack at an Indiana mosque before meeting the congregants there and finding his extreme beliefs challenged. Stranger at the Gate was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film, leading Yousafzai to attend the 2023 Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles with her husband. “It’s been so surreal. There are so many beautiful, gorgeous people by my side,” she told ABC in a red carpet interview.
Although her film didn’t win, Yousafzai was involved in a memorably awkward moment with host Jimmy Kimmel. During a segment in which Kimmel read fake viewer questions to celebrity attendees, he asked the Nobel Prize winner about the viral “spitgate” controversy involving actors Harry Styles and Chris Pine. When Yousafzai gave an evasive response, Kimmel commended her and jokingly quipped that the winner of the night is “Malala Land,” a reference to the 2016 musical La La Land. Although many viewers felt the exchange was disrespectful, Yousafzai addressed the situation with a tweet that simply said, “Treat people with kindness.”
Husband
While attending Oxford in summer 2018, Yousafzai met Asser Malik, who was visiting friends on campus. Despite Malala’s reservations about marriage—she said in a 2021 essay she believed she wouldn’t marry until she was at least 35 years old, if at all—the pair wed in November 2021 in Birmingham.
In addition to their educational backgrounds—similar to Yousafzai, Malik earned a degree in economics and political science in 2012—the pair have bonded over their mutual love of cricket. Malik works for the sport’s governing body in Pakistan and is the co-founder of an amateur league.
Yousafzai said in 2021 her time together with Malik helped her see that she could “remain true to my values of equality, fairness, and integrity” while simultaneously being in a relationship. “I still don’t have all the answers for the challenges facing women—but I believe that I can enjoy friendship, love, and equality in marriage,” she told British Vogue.
Quotes
Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons.
If I win [the] 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.
Dear friends, on the 9th of October, 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed.
I want people to remember that Pakistan is my country. Even if its people hate me, I will still love it.
I am only talking about education, women’s rights, and peace. I want poverty to end in tomorrow’s Pakistan. I want every girl in Pakistan to go to school.
I am still the old Malala. I still try to live normally, but yes, my life has changed a lot.
Education is neither eastern nor western. Education is education, and it’s the right of every human being.
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