Malala Yousafzai was born on 12 July, 1997, in Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Daughter of Toorpekai Yousafzai and Ziauddin Yousafzai, she has two brothers. Aged 13 she became well known thanks to a blog she was writing under the pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC, talking about her life under the regime of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (a terrorist organization linked to the Taliban movement, which proclaims Islamic religious extremism and jihadism) in the Swat River valley. The Taliban closed the private schools and banned girls from education between the years of 2003 and 2009. That year, the documentary Class Dismissed: Malala’s Story (made by Adam Ellick and Irfan Ashraf of The New York Times), presented Malala and the lack of possibilities for an education for women in the area. On 9 October, 2012, she was attacked by a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militant in Mingora, after he boarded the school bus Yousafzai was on and shot her in the head and neck. The attack brought an international response and Yousafzai was sent messages of support by Asif Ali Zargari, Desmond Tutu, Ban Ki-moon, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton and many others. On 15 October, 2012, she was moved to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in the United Kingdom, given fears for her safety and in order for her to have reconstructive surgery and to recover, finally being released on 4 January, 2013. In 2013 she was listed by Time magazine as one of the world’s most influential figures. In May 2014 she took part in the campaign for the liberation of Nigerian schoolgirls, kidnapped by an Islamist group. In October 2014, together with the Indian activist for girls’ rights, Kailash Satyarthi, she won the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest ever winner of this prize. In 2017 she was given honorary Canadian citizenship. She attended Edgbaston High School for Girls, in Birmingham, England, from 2013 to 2017. Afterwards, she began her studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. On 29 March, 2018, Yousafzai visited Pakistan for the first time since the attack on her life.
