Activist Malala Wins Award: Pakistani activist for women’s education was almost killed for her work but has recovered and is battling once again for impoverished women of western Pakistan

Pakistani Teen Honored As Humanitarian

AP Video

A 16-year-old Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban is being honored as Harvard University’s humanitarian of the year. (September 27)

From Wikipedia:

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai’s advocacy has since grown into an international movement.

Her family runs a chain of schools in the region. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban occupation, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls in the Swat Valley. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. Yousafzai rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.