Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai (born 12 July 1997), often referred to mononymously as Malala, is a Pakistani activist for female education and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to ever receive a Nobel Prize.

She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the Pakistani Taliban have at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."

The daughter of education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, she was born to a Yusufzai Pashtun family in Swat, and named after the Afghan national heroine, Malalai of Maiwand. Considering Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan), Barack Obama, and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work.

In early 2009, when she was 11, she wrote a blog under her pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu to detail her life during the Taliban's occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistan Armed Forces launched Operation Rah-e-Rast against the militants in Swat. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.

Citation; Wikipedia (2022)