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Nobel laureate Malala in Pakistan for girls' education talk

January 11, 2025

Education activist Malala Yousafzai has returned to her homeland Pakistan for a summit on girls' education in the Islamic world. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate said she was "overwhelmed."

https://p.dw.com/p/4p2sG
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai's aim is to build a global movement to ensure girls at least 12 years of schooling [FILE: July 2018]Image: Miguel Schincariol/AFP/Getty Images

Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai on Saturday returned to her native country for a summit on girls' education.

Malala was shot by Pakistani Taliban militants when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2012. She has returned to the country only a handful of times since.

What is Malala doing in Pakistan?

Representatives from Muslim-majority countries, where tens of millions of girls are out of school, are set to attend the two-day summit in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Yousafzai is due to speak and is expected to focus on the prohibition of learning for women and girls in neighboring Afghanistan — the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from attending school and university.

"I'm truly honored, overwhelmed and happy to be back in Pakistan," the now 27-year-old told the AFP news agency as she arrived.

"I will speak about protecting rights for all girls to go to school, and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women & girls," she posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

"The Muslim world including Pakistan faces significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to education for girls," Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said at the opening of the summit. 

"Denying education to girls is tantamount to denying their voice and their choice, while depriving them of their right to a bright future."

Who is Malala?

Yousafzai, better known simply as "Malala," became a household name after Pakistan Taliban militants attacked her on a school bus in the remote Swat valley in 2012.

Two of the militants, who were targeting her for online activism, asked: "Who is Malala?" When they identified her, they shot her in the head.

Yousafzai made a surprise recovery and was transferred to a hospital in the UK, where she later settled and launched a movement campaigning for girls' education.

Militancy was rampant in the region at the time, with the war between the Afghan Taliban and NATO forces raging across the border in Afghanistan.

rc/ab (AFP, EFE)