Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai S.St is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai's advocacy has since grown into an international movement...
NationalityPakistani
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth12 July 1997
CityMingora, Pakistan
CountryPakistan
We should not be followers of traditions that go against human rights...we are human beings and we make traditions
Then they told me about the call from home and that they were taking the threats seriously. I don't know why, but hearing I was being targeted did not worry me. It seemed to me that everyone knows they will die one day. My feeling was nobody can stop death; it doesn't matter if it comes from a Talib or cancer. So I should do whatever I want to do.
As we crossed the Malakand Pass I saw a young girl selling oranges. She was scratching marks on a piece of paper with a pencil to account for the oranges she had sold, as she could not read or write. I took a photo of her and vowed I would do everything in my power to help educate girls just like her. This was the war I was going to fight.
My father used to say the people of Swat and the teachers would continue to educate our children until the last room, the last teacher and the last student was alive. My parents never once suggested I should withdraw from school, ever. Though we loved school, we hadn't realized how important education was until the Taliban tried to stop us.
We liked to be known as the clever girls. When we decorated our hands with henna for holidays and weddings, we drew calculus and chemical formulae instead of flowers and butterflies.
The Taliban could take our pens and books, but they couldn’t stop our minds from thinking.
We felt like the Taliban saw us as little dolls to control, telling us what to do and how to dress. I thought if God wanted us to be like that He wouldn't have made us all different.
My dream is to see every girl educated, in every country.
If we want to end terrorism we need to bring quality education so we defeat the mindset of terrorism mentality and of hatred.
We are starving for education... it's like a precious gift. It's like a diamond.
A girl has the power to go forward in her life. And she's not only a mother, she's not only a sister, she's not only a wife. But a girl has the - she should have an identity. She should be recognized and she has equal rights as a boy.
Education is the best weapon through which we can fight poverty, ignorance and terrorism.
I tell my story, not because its unique, but because its not, it is the story of many girls
The content of a book holds the power of education and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives.