Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, the
largest city in the Swat
Valley in what is now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. She is the daughter of Ziauddin and
Tor Pekai Yousafzai has and two younger brothers.
At a very young age, Malala developed a thirst for knowledge. For
years her father, a passionate education advocate himself, ran a learning
institution in the city, and school was a big part of Malala's family. She
later wrote that her father told her stories about how she would toddle into
classes even before she could talk and acted as if she were the teacher.
In 2007, when Malala was ten years old, the situation in the Swat Valley
rapidly changed for her family and community. The Taliban began to control the Swat Valley
and quickly became the dominant socio-political force throughout much of
northwestern Pakistan.
Girls were banned from attending school, and cultural activities like dancing
and watching television were prohibited. Suicide attacks were widespread, and
the group made its opposition to a proper education for girls a cornerstone of
its terror campaign. By the end of 2008, the Taliban had destroyed some 400
schools.
Determined to go to school and with a firm belief in her right to
an education, Malala stood up to the Taliban. Alongside her father, Malala
quickly became a critic of their tactics. "How dare the Taliban take away
my basic right to education?" she once said on Pakistani TV.
In early 2009, Malala started to blog anonymously on the Urdu
language site of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). She wrote about
life in the Swat Valley under Taliban rule, and about her
desire to go to school. Using the name "Gul Makai," she described
being forced to stay at home, and she questioned the motives of the Taliban.
Malala was 11 years old when she wrote her first BBC diary entry.
Under the blog heading "I am afraid," she described her fear of a
full-blown war in her beautiful Swat
Valley, and her
nightmares about being afraid to go to school because of the Taliban.
Pakistan's war with
the Taliban was fast approaching, and on May 5, 2009, Malala became an
internally displaced person (IDP), after having been forced to leave her home
and seek safety hundreds of miles away.
On her return, after weeks of being away from Swat, Malala once
again used the media and continued her public campaign for her right to go to
school. Her voice grew louder, and over the course of the next three years, she
and her father became known throughout Pakistan for their determination to
give Pakistani girls access to a free quality education. Her activism resulted
in a nomination for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011. That same
year, she was awarded Pakistan's
National Youth Peace Prize. But, not everyone supported and welcomed her
campaign to bring about change in Swat. On the morning of October 9, 2012,
15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban.
Seated on a bus heading home from school, Malala was talking with
her friends about schoolwork. Two members of the Taliban stopped the bus. A
young bearded Talib asked for Malala by name, and fired three shots at her. One
of the bullets entered and exited her head and lodged in her shoulder. Malala
was seriously wounded. That same day, she was airlifted to a Pakistani military
hospital in Peshawar and four days later to an
intensive care unit in Birmingham,
England.
Once she was in the United Kingdom, Malala was taken
out of a medically induced coma. Though she would require multiple surgeries,
including repair of a facial nerve to fix the paralyzed left side of her face,
she had suffered no major brain damage. In March 2013, after weeks of treatment
and therapy, Malala was able to begin attending school in Birmingham.
After the shooting, her incredible recovery and return to school
resulted in a global outpouring of support for Malala. On July 12, 2013, her
16th birthday, Malala visited New
York and spoke at the United Nations. Later that
year, she published her first book, an autobiography entitled "I Am Malala:
The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban." On
October 10, 2013, in acknowledgement of her work, the European Parliament
awarded Malala the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
In 2014, through the Malala Fund, the organization she co-founded
with her father, Malala traveled to Jordan to meet Syrian refugees, to Kenya to
meet young female students, and finally to northern Nigeria for her 17th
birthday. In Nigeria,
she spoke out in support of the abducted girls who were kidnapped earlier that
year by Boko Haram, a terrorist group which, like the Taliban, tries to stop
girls from going to school.
In October 2014, Malala, along with Indian children's rights
activist Kailash Satyarthi, was named a Nobel Peace Prize winner. At age 17,
she became the youngest person to receive this prize. Accepting the award,
Malala reaffirmed that "This award is not just for me. It is for those
forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who
want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change."
Today, the Malala Fund has become an organization that, through
education, empowers girls to achieve their potential and become confident and
strong leader in their own countries. Funding education projects in six
countries and working with international leaders, the Malala Fund joins with
local partners to invest in innovative solutions on the ground and advocates
globally for quality secondary education for all girls.
Currently residing in Birmingham,
Malala is an active proponent of education as a fundamental social and economic
right. Through the Malala Fund and with her own voice, Malala Yousafzai remains
a staunch advocate for the power of education and for girls to become agents of
change in their communities.
From The Nobel Prizes 2014. Published on behalf of The
Nobel Foundation by Science History Publications/USA, division Watson
Publishing International LLC, Sagamore
Beach, 2015
This autobiography/biography was written
at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/ Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes.
The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2014/yousafzai-bio.html
who-Malala
when-on July 12, 1997
where- the largest city in the Swat Valley in what is now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan
institution -制度dominant-占優勢的prohibited-禁止widespread-廣泛的educationanonymously-不具名的internally-國內的
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2014/yousafzai-bio.html
