Malala Yousafzai Becomes Youngest Person to Win Nobel Peace Prize

by Eramis Momchilovich

“I speak not for myself but for those without voice... those who have fought for their rights... their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be educated.” These words of wisdom were spoken by one of the 2014 winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala Yousafzai. Also recognized with the distinction this year is Kailash Satyarthi. 

Malala is a seventeen-year-old Pakistani girl who has been fighting for young women’s rights to education since before she became a teenager. She is the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize and her heroic struggle has motivated a worldwide enlightenment on the condition of women’s rights.

This young woman has been through many hardships including threats from the Taliban on her own life as well as her family. And, on October 9, 2012, Malala was shot in the head by a gunman who boarded her school bus. The bullet traveled under the skin of her face and down through her shoulder, but she recovered through multiple surgeries. This incident propelled Malala into the international spotlight and a year later on her sixteenth birthday she gave her first speech at the United Nations. She also released her autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban in October of 2013. Within the same year she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She started her activism years ago as a school girl writing an anonymous diary and giving a voice to all the fears and struggles of a typical female student in areas under Taliban control, and now is a prominent world renown author and speaker. She has captivated the world’s ear and is using it to get children around the globe to take a stand and encourage organizations and nations to do the same.