Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan, located in the country’s northern Swat Valley. For the first few years of her life, Yousafzai’s hometown remained a popular tourist spot that was known for its summer festivals. The area began to change as the Taliban tried to take control.

Yousafzai’s father, Ziauddin, is an educator, but her mother, Tor Pekai, was illiterate until she was in her 40s. The couple always supported their daughter’s education. Malala attended a school that her father had founded.

After the Taliban began attacking girls schools in Swat, 11-year-old Yousafzai gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, “How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?” In early 2009, Yousafzai began blogging for the BBC about living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education. In order to hide her identity, she used the name Gul Makai. However, her identity was revealed that December.

With a growing public platform, Yousafzai continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an 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.

Yousafzai and her family learned that the Taliban had issued a death threat against her because of her activism. Although Malala was frightened for the safety of her father—an anti-Taliban activist—she and her family initially felt that the fundamentalist group would not actually harm a child.

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