International Malala Day, also known as Malala Day, is annually celebrated across the globe on 12 July to honour the birthday of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani female education activist and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
- The day also recognises the fight for girls’ education and advocacy for education rights around the world.
Background:
i.On her 16th birthday (12 July 2013), Malala Yousafzai gave an impactful speech on her 1st high-level public appearance at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, the United States of America (USA).
- Her speech primarily focussed on the equal right to education for girls all over the world, and became an international symbol of this cause.
ii.The UN declared her birthday as “Malala Day” and has been observed internationally for the 1st time on 12 July 2013.
- On 12 July 2013, the UN celebrated Malala Day, an event supporting the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), gathering hundreds of young leaders to advocate for free and compulsory education for every child worldwide.
Note: GEFI, a 5-year global initiative to mobilise efforts and action for education and rally an international movement to achieve quality, relevant and inclusive education for all by 2015.
About Malala Yousafzai:
i.Malala Yousafzai was born in Mingora, Pakistan on 12 July 1997.
ii.In January 2009, she started to blog under another name (Gul Makai) about her life in the Swat Valley under Taliban rule on the Urdu language site of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
- She was 11 years old when she wrote her 1st BBC diary entry.
iii.In 2012, she was shot in the head on a school bus by a Taliban gunman, who restricted female education.
iv.In 2013, TIME magazine named Malala one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.”
v.In 2013, Malala and her father Ziauddin Yousafzai co-founded the Malala Fund to bring awareness to girls’ education’s social and economic impact and empower girls to demand change.
vi.The UN Secretary-General António Guterres designated Malala as a UN Messenger of Peace in 2017 to help raise awareness of the importance of girl’s education.
Nobel Prize:
i.In October 2014, Malala, along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, was named a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
ii.She is the first Pashtun, the 2nd Pakistani, and the youngest person to receive this Prize at 17 years.
- Physicist Abdus Salam was the 1st Pakistani to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979.
Other Awards:
i.In 2012 the Pakistani government awarded Malala the National Peace Award – subsequently renamed the National Malala Peace Prize, for those under 18 years old.
ii.In 2013, in acknowledgment of her work, the European Parliament awarded Malala the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
iii.In 2023, she was awarded a prestigious honorary fellowship by Oxford University’s Linacre College (United Kingdom (UK)), becoming the 1st Pakistani to receive a fellowship from Linacre College.
- The awarding of an honorary fellowship to Malala, further strengthened the relationship between Linacre College and the Oxford Pakistan Programme (OPP).
Noted Books: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban, an autobiography of Malala, co-authored by Christina Lamb (2013); We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World(2019); Malala Speaks Out (2023).
