While education is a basic right in our country and every child is encouraged to study and attend school, there are some parts of the world where children, especially girls, are threatened and even killed for attempting to study. Children in these areas are too scared to defy the law and end up sacrificing their education, rather than their lives.
In Pakistan’s Swat Valley, a repressive militant group called the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) declared a ban on women’s education. However, a young girl named Malala Yousafzai refused to give up on her dreams. Born in Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan on July, 12, 1997, Malala is the daughter of an educational activist named Zi-auddin Yousafzai. She defied the archaic laws set down by the Taliban as a child and began speaking about education rights in September 2008 at the Peshawar Press club. She was 11 at the time. She also blogged for the BBC about life under the rule of the Taliban and took part in a New York Times documentary on the same.
As Malala began gaining prominence in her fight against them, the Taliban decided to eliminate her. On October 9, 2012, a TTP gunman stopped the school bus she was travelling in and called out her name. She answered at once fearful that the gunman would harm one of her friends instead of her. The gunman shot her through the head and fled the scene.
Miraculously Malala survived, but instead of suppressing female education, this incident triggered an outpouring of national and international support for her and sparked outrage against the TTP. Malala has since then become a global figure, spearheading the fight for women’s education and highlighting the plight of girls in Taliban-controlled regions. She has been awarded numerous prizes, among which the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 is the most notable. She was the youngest recipient of this honour at 17. She has written several books, of which ‘I am Malala’ is a bestseller.
Picture Credit : Google
