Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai is the daughter of Ziauddin Yousafzai and Tor Pekai Yousafzai, and she has two younger brothers, Khushal and Atal. Her father is an educator, poet, school owner and education activist who strongly influenced her commitment to girls' education.

Yousafzai married Asser Malik in Birmingham on 9 November 2021. Malik is a manager with the Pakistan Cricket Board.

Yousafzai grew up in Mingora in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where her father ran the Khushal Girls High School and College. She developed a strong interest in education from an early age and frequently topped her class. When the Pakistani Taliban began imposing restrictions in Swat, girls were banned from attending school and hundreds of schools were destroyed or closed.

At age 11, Yousafzai gave her first public speech at a press club in Peshawar. In early 2009, she began writing a diary for BBC Urdu under the pseudonym Gul Makai, describing life under Taliban rule and her determination to return to school. She later participated in the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's Open Minds Pakistan youth programme and appeared in interviews and documentaries about the school closures.

During the Second Battle of Swat in 2009, Yousafzai and her family were displaced from Mingora. The experience strengthened her public campaign for girls' education, and she later said that she wanted to become a politician before deciding that education advocacy offered another way to create change.

On 9 October 2012, a Taliban gunman stopped Yousafzai's school bus as she was travelling home after an exam and shot her in the head. She was 15 years old. The bullet passed through her head and neck before lodging in her shoulder, and two of her classmates were also wounded.

Yousafzai received emergency treatment in Pakistan before being transferred to Birmingham, England. Doctors performed surgery to relieve pressure on her brain, and she later underwent operations to repair her facial nerve, reconstruct her skull and restore her hearing. After recovering, she returned to school in Birmingham in March 2013.

The attack prompted protests and international support for her campaign. A petition launched by UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown called for children around the world to attend school and contributed to the ratification of Pakistan's first Right to Education bill.

Following her recovery, Yousafzai became an international advocate for education as a human right. She co-founded the Malala Fund, which supports education projects, works with local advocates and campaigns for quality secondary education for girls.

On her 16th birthday in 2013, she addressed the United Nations in New York during an event later known as Malala Day. She also met with Barack Obama and discussed her view that drone strikes in Pakistan could fuel terrorism. Her advocacy expanded to include the rights of refugees and girls affected by conflict.

With support from the Malala Fund, Yousafzai opened a school in Lebanon on her 18th birthday for Syrian refugee girls aged 14 to 18. She has also spoken about the education restrictions imposed on girls in Afghanistan and urged international action to protect Afghan women's rights.

Yousafzai received Pakistan's National Youth Peace Prize in 2011 and the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2013. In 2014, she and Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on behalf of children's rights and education.

At age 17, Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel laureate. She later received honorary Canadian citizenship, became the youngest person to address Canada's House of Commons and was appointed the youngest United Nations Messenger of Peace. The asteroid 316201 Malala was named in her honour in 2015.

After moving to Birmingham, Yousafzai attended Edgbaston High School. She later studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, graduating in 2020.

Her first memoir, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, was published in 2013 and written with journalist Christina Lamb. She followed it with the children's book Malala's Magic Pencil and We Are Displaced: True Stories of Refugee Lives, which explores the experiences of refugees. Her second memoir, Finding My Way, was published in 2025.

Yousafzai's life and activism were the subject of the documentary He Named Me Malala, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. She also helped produce the short documentary Stranger at the Gate, which received an Academy Award nomination.

In 2021, Yousafzai entered a multiyear programming partnership with Apple TV+. Her later production work included Bread & Roses, a documentary about Afghan women made alongside Jennifer Lawrence, and the Broadway musical Suffs, which chronicles the women's suffrage movement in the United States.