Malala Yousafzai, The Youngest Girl To Ever Win A Nobel Prize
Malala Yousafzai, being one of the youngest names to ever appear on the list of Nobel prize winners, is a female education activist. Along the way of becoming the successful and inspiring person she is today, she has experienced many tragic events.
Malala Yousafzai was born on 12 July 1997 Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Her father was an education activist and her family was running a school in the region. In her book titled I am Malala, she wrote that her father named her after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman from southern Afghanistan. She was mostly educated by her father Ziauddin Yousafzai, and lived with her two brothers and mother. Inspired by her father’s work, she started her writing journey at the age of 12 by writing a blog post on BBC Urdu about her experiences during the Taliban’s occupation of Swat, her hometown. Journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about Malala’s life the following summer. She then started to gain recognition by having interviews on television and was nominated for the International Children’s Prize by Desmond Tutu.
But this recognition caused her to be also known and targeted by the Taliban, who had Swat in control and were restricting women’s rights. At the time, the Taliban forced young girls to quit their education and stay home. They would threaten girls who would not listen and punish them. They also blew up schools where girls were being educated. Malala continued to go to school under these circumstances and stood up to the Taliban by posting on her blog, creating campaigns, and making speeches about the importance of education. But soon enough, she started to receive threats from the Taliban telling her to quit school and quit protesting. Even though she was afraid, she never stopped. On 9 October 2012, Malala was coming back home from school by bus when a Taliban gunman shot her along with two other girls. İn her book, it is written that the gunman said: ‘Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all.” Malala spoke up and got shot in the head by a bullet that traveled 18 inches from the side of her left eye, through her neck and landed in her shoulder. After this horrible incident, she was taken to a military hospital in Peshawar, where doctors began an operation in order to prevent the swelling developed in the left portion of her brain. After a long operation, the doctors were able to remove the bullet. However, doctors decided that she needed more assistance and medical treatment therefore they moved Malala to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England. The UK government stated that the Pakistani government is paying all transport, migration, medical, accommodation and subsistence costs for Malala. After a lot of treatment, surgeries and physiotherapy, Malala managed to recover.
This shooting received a lot of protest not only from some cities of Pakistan, but also from all around the world. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack ‘’a heinous and cowardly act’’. United States President Barack Obama stated that he found the attack ‘’reprehensible, disgusting and tragic.’’ Malala spoke at various different remarcable places such as the Buckingham Palace, Harvard University, the Oxford Union and the United Nations. On the 12th of July 2015, her 18th birthday, she opened a school that funded the non-profit Malala Fund in Bekaa Valley, for Syrian refugees. She called upon world leaders to invest in ‘’books, not bullets’’. One of her biggest accomplishments, along with all of the others, is being the youngest Nobel prize winner. On 10 October 2014, at the age of seventeen, she was announced as the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her efforts against suppression of children and for all children to have the right to education. İn 2020, she graduated from Oxford University with honors and she is still continuing her journey as an activist today.
Malala Yousafzai has certainly impacted the world for the better and has inspired many young people across the world to speak up and chase their dreams. Even after being a victim to a murder attemt, she has never given up and has continued to acknowledge people to educate themselves and highlight the importance of education.
Defne Suyabatmaz
Work Cited:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6by9NEhT9GM
Adam B. Ellick (9 October 2012). “My ‘Small Video Star’ Fights for Her Life”. The New York Times.
“Malala, une entreprise”. Le Point. Agence France-Presse.
https://www.vogue.com/article/malala-yousafzai-nobel-peace-prize-winner-graduates-from-oxford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Malala-Yousafzai
I am Malala, Malala Yousafzai
