First of all, I'm going to tell you some fascinating facts that you probably never have heard

about:

 There are still 31 million girls of primary school age out of school. Of these 17 million are
expected never to enter school. There are 4 million fewer boys than girls out of school

• Three countries have over a million girls not in school: In Nigeria there are almost five and a half
million, Pakistan, over three million, and in Ethiopia, over one million girls out of school.

 There are also 34 million female adolescents out of school, missing out on the chance to learn vital
skills for work.
 Slow education progress for children today will have lifelong effects: Almost a quarter of young
women aged 15-24 today (116 million) in developing countries have never completed primary
school and so lack skills for work. Young women make up 58% of those not completing primary
school.
• Two-thirds of the 774 million illiterate people in the world are female.

These facts tell us that even today, girls don't have equal rights. Can you imagine that we are not in
21. century? That we are in the middle age, or even further in history.

First female school for Serbian girls was founded in 1845 in Paraćin. Year 1892 was very important
because among all those boys, 16 girls started going to school. But, even so, at the beginning of
20th century there were only 7% literate women in Serbia.

Because of that, today we are going to talk about Malala Yousafzai. She is Pakinstani-born activist
for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She opened a school for Syrian refugee
girls in Lebanon and is curently studying PPE at Oxford University. Five years ago Malala was shot in
an attempt to stop her from speaking out for girls’ education.

Malala was born on 12 July 1997 in the Swat District of Pakistan's northwestern province into a
lower-middle-class family to Ziauddin Yousafzai and Tor Pekai Yousafzai. Her family is a Sunni
Muslim family of Pashtun ethnicity. The family did not have enough money for a hospital birth;
Yousafzai was born at home with the help of neighbours. She was given her first name Malala
(meaning "grief-stricken")after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman
from southern Afghanistan. Her last name, Yousafzai, is that of a large Pashtun tribal confederation
that is predominant in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where she grew up. At her house in Mingora, she
lived with her two younger brothers, her parents and two pet chickens.

Fluent in Pashto(official languageof Afganistan and minority language in Pakistan), English, and
Urdu(Pakinstan, India), Malala was educated mostly by her father , who is a poet, school owner and
an educational activist himself, running a chain of private schools known as the Khushal Public
School. She once stated to an interviewer that she would like to become a doctor, though later her
father encouraged her to become a politician instead. Ziauddin referred to his daughter as
something entirely special, allowing her to stay up at night and talk about politics after her two
brothers had been sent to bed.
In 2007, Taliban militants take control of Swat. They ban many things — like owning a television and
playing music — and enforce harsh punishments, including public executions, for citizens who defy
their orders. In December of 2008, the Taliban issues an edict banning girls from going to school.

Inspired by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Yousafzai started speaking
about education rights as early as September 2008, when her father took her to Peshawar to speak
at the local press club."How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?", Yousafzai
asked her audience in a speech covered by newspapers and television channels throughout the
region. In 2009, Yousafzai began as a trainee and then a peer educator in the Institute for War and
Peace Reporting's Open Minds Pakistan youth programme, which worked in schools in the region to
help young people engage in constructive discussion on social issues through the tools of
journalism, public debate and dialogue.

Using the pen name “Gul Makai” to protect her identity, Malala begins blogging for the BBC about
life under the Taliban. She describes how she feels in the final days before her school is set to close.
In May, the Pakistani Army moved into the region to regain control during the Second Battle of
Swat. Mingora was evacuated and Yousafzai's family was displaced and separated. Her father went
to Peshawar to protest and lobby for support, while she was sent into the countryside to live with
relatives. After reading Malala’s blog for the BBC, The New York Times features Malala and Ziauddin
in a short documentary about their life and fight to protect girls’ education in Swat. "I'm really
bored because I have no books to read", Yousafzai is filmed saying in the documentary.

In October 2011, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a South African activist, nominated Yousafzai for the
International Children's Peace Prize of the Dutch international children's advocacy group Kids Rights
Foundation. She was the first Pakistani girl to be nominated for the award.

Her public profile rose even further when she was awarded Pakistan's first National Youth Peace
Prize two months later in December. On 19 December 2011, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani
awarded her the National Peace Award for Youth. At the proceedings in her honour, Yousafzai
stated that she was not a member of any political party, but hoped to found a national party of her
own to promote education. The prime minister directed the authorities to set up an IT campus in
the Swat Degree College for Women at Yousafzai's request, and a secondary school was renamed in
her honour. By 2012, Yousafzai was planning to organise the Malala Education Foundation, which
would help poor girls go to school.

As Yousafzai became more recognised, the dangers facing her increased. Death threats against her
were published in newspapers and slipped under her door. On Facebook, where she was an active
user, she began to receive threats and fake profiles were created under her name. In a meeting
held in the summer of 2012, Taliban leaders agreed to kill her.

On 9 October 2012, a Taliban gunman shot Yousafzai as she rode home on a bus after taking an
exam in Pakistan's Swat Valley. The masked gunman shouted "Which one of you is Malala? Speak
up, otherwise I will shoot you all", and, on her being identified, shot at her. She was hit with one
bullet, which went through her head, neck, and ended in her shoulder. Two of her friends, Kainat
and Shazia, are also injured in the attack.

Malala survives, but remains in critical condition as she is transported to the United Kingdom for
treatment. People in Pakistan and around the world pray for her recovery.The murder attempt
sparked a national and international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle wrote in
January 2013 that she may have become "the most famous teenager in the world"

Protests against the shooting were held in several Pakistani cities the day after the attack, and over
2 million people signed the Right to Education campaign's petition, which led to ratificationof the
first Right to Education Bill in Pakistan.

Madonna dedicated her song "Human Nature" to Malala at a concert in Los Angeles. Angelina Jolie
donated $200,000 to The Malala Fund.

Former First Lady of the United States Laura Bush compared her to Anne Frank.

July 12, 2013:

In her first public appearance since the attack, Malala speaks at the United Nations on her 16th
birthday. The U.N. declares July 12th “Malala Day” — and Malala promises to dedicate this day each
year to shining a spotlight on the world’s most vulnerable girls.

In 2013, Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin, established the Malala Fund to give girls all over the
world access to education.That same year, Yousafzai published a memoir titled "I Am Malala," co-
written with Christina Lamb.

In 2014, Yousafzai became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She said the award was
also "for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want
change."

Yousafzai recently published a children's book titled "Malala's Magic Pencil." "The magic is in their
voice, in their words, in their writings," she said of the kids who read her book. "They should dream
beyond limits and believe that there is magic in them."

Yousafzai began studying at Oxford University in October 2017. She will study philosophy, politics,
and economics.
 I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award.
Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. I am grateful for the letters and
cards that I still receive from all around the world. Reading your kind and encouraging words
strengthens and inspires me.
I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not
clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient
and to always speak the truth- which we strongly believe is the real message of Islam.
I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the first young person to receive
this award. I am pretty certain that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still
fights with her younger brothers. I want there to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I are
still working on that.
This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those
frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.
I am here to stand up for their rights, raise their voice ... it is not time to pity them. It is time to
take action so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.
I have found that people describe me in many different ways.
Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban.
And some, the girl who fought for her rights.
Some people, call me a "Nobel Laureate" now.
As far as I know, I am just a committed and stubborn person who wants to see every child
getting quality education, who wants equal rights for women and who wants peace in every
corner of the world.
And let us build a better future right here, right now.
Thank you.