Malala Yousafzai

Who is Malala Yousafzai?

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education activist and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. Born in 1997 in Mingora, in the Swat Valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, she grew up amid Taliban efforts to ban girls' education. As a schoolgirl she wrote an anonymous diary for the BBC Urdu service describing life under Taliban rule and campaigned openly for girls' right to learn. In October 2012, a Taliban gunman shot her in the head as she rode home from school; she survived after emergency treatment and rehabilitation in the United Kingdom, where she continued her advocacy. In 2014 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Kailash Satyarthi, becoming the youngest recipient in the prize's history. She co-founded the Malala Fund to support girls' education worldwide and later graduated from the University of Oxford, remaining a globally recognized voice for education.

Sources: Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb, 'I Am Malala' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013) · Nobel Peace Prize 2014, official citation (nobelprize.org)