New Delhi: Every year on July 12, Malala Day is celebrated in honour of Malala Yousafzai, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala is an extraordinary girl who overcame extreme struggles to fight for children’s and women’s rights. Interestingly, Malala is the youngest Nobel Prize recipient ever and is the sole Pashtun to date to receive it. While the United Nations established Malala Day to honour her, Malala emphasized that it is also a day to recognize advocacy for education rights worldwide.
The struggles of Malala
Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, into a lower-middle-class family in the Swat District of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Her father Ziauddin Yousafzai is a noted education activist and she was named after Malalai of Maiwand, the heroine in Afghan folklore. She is inspired by her father’s thoughts and considers Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Benazir Bhutto and Barack Obama as her role models.
In early 2009, at the age of just 11, Malala wrote a blog for the BBC Urdu under her pseudonym Gul Makai describing her life in Swat occupied by the Taliban. Next year, Adam B. Ellick, a journalist, made a documentary about her life for the New York Times. In 2011, she was honoured with the first National Youth Peace Prize of Pakistan.
When Malala was shot
On October 9, 2012, the Taliban shot Malala and two other girls while they were on a bus in Swat after taking an exam. She was targeted for her activism and was shot in the head. As a result, she was in a critical condition in the subsequent days but eventually, her condition improved and she was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the UK’s Birmingham.
The incident sparked international outrage and weeks later, Pakistan’s 50 leading Muslim clerics issued a fatwā against the perpetrators. While human rights groups and governments slammed the Taliban, the organisation further denounced her, indicating plans to make another assassination attempt.
Malala’s fame increased following her recovery and she became a more famous education activist. She founded the Malala Fund in Birmingham with Shiza Shahid and in 2013, she came up with her famous book ‘I Am Malala’. She was honoured with the Sakharov Prize in the same year and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 along with India’s Kailash Satyarthi. She was just 17 years old at that time. She was only the second Pakistani to receive the Nobel Prize after Abdus Salam, the Pakistani theoretical physicist.
In early 2009, at the age of just 11, Malala wrote a blog under her pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu where she described her life in Swat occupied by the Taliban. knowledge Knowledge News, Photos and Videos on General Knowledge
