Malala Yousafzai is arguably the most well-known champion of education on the planet. Born in 1997, she has beaten incredible odds to achieve feats that would put most fictional superheroes to shame, and her defiance in the face of extreme danger has inspired everyone from children to governments to join her campaigns.
Turmoil and the Taliban
Malala was born in Mingora, a city in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan. Her father was a teacher and a passionate advocate for education who ran a learning institution of his own in the city, and instilled a love of learning in Malala from a very early age. She was an enthusiastic student, and her father proudly talks of how she would toddle into classes even before she could talk, acting as if she were the teacher.
This was all to change in 2007, when the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley and adopted a scorched earth policy towards education. Girls were banned from attending lessons and hundreds of schools were simply destroyed. With the typical resilience of the True Superhero, Malala refused to accept this and - with the help of her father - not only continued her education, but spoke out publicly against the Taliban, even going so far as to criticize their policies on national television broadcasts.
A school destroyed by the Taliban in northern Pakistan
The True Superhero of schoolgirls
Malala took her resistance to remarkable lengths. In 2009, aged just 11, she began writing a column for the BBC News website called “Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl”, in which she documented the difficulties she faced trying to get an education in the Swat Valley. She wrote these entries anonymously using the pen name of Gul Makai; an early entry reads: “My father said that some days ago someone brought the printout of this diary saying how wonderful it was. My father said that he smiled but could not even say that it was written by his daughter.”
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Malala Yousafzai is arguably the most well-known champion of education on the planet. Born in 1997, she has beaten incredible odds to achieve feats that would put most fictional superheroes to shame, and her defiance in the face of extreme danger has inspired everyone from children to governments to join her campaigns.
Turmoil and the Taliban
Malala was born in Mingora, a city in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan. Her father was a teacher and a passionate advocate for education who ran a learning institution of his own in the city, and instilled a love of learning in Malala from a very early age. She was an enthusiastic student, and her father proudly talks of how she would toddle into classes even before she could talk, acting as if she were the teacher.
This was all to change in 2007, when the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley and adopted a scorched earth policy towards education. Girls were banned from attending lessons and hundreds of schools were simply destroyed. With the typical resilience of the True Superhero, Malala refused to accept this and - with the help of her father - not only continued her education, but spoke out publicly against the Taliban, even going so far as to criticize their policies on national television broadcasts.
A school destroyed by the Taliban in northern Pakistan
The True Superhero of schoolgirls
Malala took her resistance to remarkable lengths. In 2009, aged just 11, she began writing a column for the BBC News website called “Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl”, in which she documented the difficulties she faced trying to get an education in the Swat Valley. She wrote these entries anonymously using the pen name of Gul Makai; an early entry reads: “My father said that some days ago someone brought the printout of this diary saying how wonderful it was. My father said that he smiled but could not even say that it was written by his daughter.”
While the BBC diary was anonymous, Malala continued to be a very public face of opposition to the Taliban and, over the next few years, she and her father became famous for their defiance of the militias that occupied their region. In 2011, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize and nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. This bravery inspired school children throughout Pakistan and beyond, but she was to pay a heavy price for her defiance.
The assassination attempt
The 15-year-old Malala was on a bus, heading home from school one day in October 2012, when two Taliban militiamen boarded the bus. They demanded to know which of the children was Malala, and then fired three bullets at her. One struck her in the head, but she miraculously survived the attack. By the end of the day, she had been flown to a military hospital in Peshawar and four days later she was taken to an intensive care unit in Birmingham, England. The attack was an enormous international news story bringing awareness of Malala’s struggle to a far wider audience, and to everyone’s relief Malala was able to make a full recovery. A few months later, she was able to resume her studies at a school in Birmingham.
Malala recovering in hospital after the attack
Malala was now an international sensation, and with extraordinary resolve she resumed her fearless campaigning. On July 12, 2013 - her 16th birthday, and barely nine months after she had been shot - she gave a rousing speech at the United Nations.
The global support for Malala’s campaign was incredible, and led to the creation of the Malala Fund, which she jointly runs with her father. The first donation came from Angelina Jolie who gave $200,000, and people around the world were inspired to give millions more. The Fund immediately set to work, and on Malala’s 17th birthday she was campaigning in northern Nigeria against the terrorist group Boko Haram, who had kidnapped 267 schoolgirls in the area.
Malala in Nigeria in 2014
The youngest Laureate
A few months later, in October 2014, Malala was awarded the ultimate accolade for her work: The Nobel Peace Prize. At just 17 years old, she was the youngest Nobel Laureate by an extraordinary distance; her nearest competitor was Lawrence Bragg, who was awarded the Nobel for Physics in 1915 at the age of 25. The previous youngest Peace Prize winners were in their early 30s.
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize aged just 17
Malala was not going to rest on her laurels, and continued to work to improve the lot of schoolgirls worldwide. In 2015, the Malala Fund supported children affected by the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, providing radios and other educational resources to help offset the damage caused by the closure of schools throughout the country. Malala also continued to use her fame directly, personally traveling to areas ravaged by war and disease around the globe to raise awareness of the plight of students.
Inspiring partnerships, and leading by example
The Malala Fund has received tremendous support from individuals, but through advocacy and campaigning work it has also managed to secure extraordinary contributions from corporations and governments. One of the first partnerships was struck in 2016, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation agreed to provide $4m to fund the launch of the Education Champion Network. This was just the start; the following year, Malala approached Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and asked him to make a commitment to girls’ education at the 2018 G7 summit. The result was a $3bn commitment to put more girls through school in the coming years.
Malala at Oxford University
At the same time, Malala was beginning the next stage of her own education, having won a scholarship to Oxford University to study a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. She graduated in 2020, and now continues to work through the Malala Fund to ensure other girls get the chance to succeed against the odds, as she has done. Meanwhile, she’s also enjoying tales of fictional superheroes, and in particular a new but familiar-sounding addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the first Muslim member of the MCU roster, Ms. Marvel.
Malala’s clearly a fan: “I love cheering for a girl who looks like me as she fights villains and rescues friends. But Ms. Marvel is for every young person finding their place in the world. As star Iman Vellani told NPR, ‘You don't have to have everything figured out at 16. You're not supposed to. And I think young people should hopefully be comforted by Kamala as a character and see that even a superhero doesn't have her life figured out.’”
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