School Student Malala Yusufzai Proposed for 2013 Nobel Peace Prize

Pakistani school student Malala Yusufzai, who was shot in the head by Talibans for her vocal support for girls' education

Photo courtesy: veteranstoday.com

 

Thousands of people all over the world, including some members of the Canadian Parliament, lent their support for nominating 14-year-old school student Malala Yusufzai of Pakistan for 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. The online petition calling for this nomination was posted by Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani-Canadian author and newspaper columnist of Toronto, Canada, reports the Toronto Sun.

Canada's Immigration Minister and member of parliament (MP) Jason Kenney and Liberal Party Leader and MP Bob Rae lent their public support for Malala's nomination.

Malala Yusufzai, a school student of Mingora in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, was vocal against the destruction of girls’ schools in the area by Muslim fundamentalist Talibans. In face of dire Taliban threats to her life, Malala was exceptionally brave in speaking out for girls’ rights, including their rights to education.

A Taliban, on October 9, boarded a bus carrying girls from the school to their homes and shot Malala in the head and wounded another girl. A team of Pakistani army doctors and civil surgeons  first treated seriously wounded Malala in the army hospital in Peshawar before transferring her to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on October 15. The doctors there announced recently that she was recovering well.

 After invading Afghanistan in late 2001, the U.S. armed force drove out the Talibans, who then took shelter in the border areas of Pakistan.  Later they became so powerful that Pakistan could not exert control over them. They started to impose Islamic Shariah laws forbidding many things including women’s education. When Malala was 11 years old, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC and described how people were living under the rule of the Talibans. That’s how she began to face threats to her life from them.