Malala Yousafzai Biography
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement.
Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in the Swat District of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She is the daughter of Ziauddin Yousafzai and Tor Pekai Yousafzai. Her father is a poet, school owner, and an educational activist himself, running a chain of schools known as the Khushal Public School.
In early 2009, when Yousafzai was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. The following summer, a New York Times documentary was filmed about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region, culminating in the Second Battle of Swat. Yousafzai rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.
On the afternoon of October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was injured after a Taliban gunman attempted to murder her. She was targeted for speaking out in favor of education for girls. The murder attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai.