Short biography of Nobel peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. She is from Pakistan, a country where 85% of women have no formal education and are illiterate, and she campaigns for the rights of girls to get an education.
She was born in Pakistan, in July 1997, to parents who encouraged her love of education. Her father owned a private school. Her mother couldn’t read or write but Malala was an avid reader and she was always first in her class. She had a dream: she wanted to be a doctor, so she had to study hard.
In 2007, everything changed. The Talibans managed to take control of the Swat region, and the laws changed: nobody was allowed to watch television or videos, to dance, to listen to music… And girls couldn’t go to school any more, they had to stay at home. Militants destroyed over 150 girl schools in 2008. Only boys could go to school.
A year later the Talibans were chased by the army but they didn’t disappear completely…
On October 9th 2012, Malala was in the school bus, with her friends. The girls were happy because they had just finished their exams. Suddenly, some Taliban men, who were wearing masks and had guns, stopped the bus. They asked who Malala was. The other children were terrified. The strangers shot Malala in the head. She was hit with two bullets, one went through her head, neck, and ended in her shoulder. Malala was seriously wounded but she survived miraculously. In a coma, she had to be taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, United Kingdom. She left the hospital in January 2013 but she had to settle in Birmingham with all her family as she could be attacked again if she went back to Pakistan.
After the attack, she said: 'l want to go to school. l don’t care if l have to sit on the floor. I am not afraid of anyone’. Malala became famous all over the world for her courage. Now Malala has a new dream. She wants to be a politician because she wants to change the world and make it a better place for children.
