Pakistani Teen Malala Yousafzai Shares Nobel Peace Prize
Updated at 5:35 a.m. ET
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who was attacked by Taliban militants for promoting education for girls, will share the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian campaigner against exploitation of children.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee says on Nobelprize.org:
"Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi's tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain. He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children's rights.
"Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzay has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations. This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' rights to education."
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Kailash Satyarthi (in while) greets U.N. officials at a meeting in Geneva in 1998. Donald Stampfli/AP hide caption
itoggle caption Donald Stampfli/AP
Kailash Satyarthi (in while) greets U.N. officials at a meeting in Geneva in 1998.
Donald Stampfli/AP
Yousafzai, 17, defied the Taliban in her town of Mingora in Swat Valley, near the volatile western frontier dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. In October 2012, Taliban militiamen boarded a school bus she was on, singled her out and shot her in the left side of the head. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack.
Left in critical condition, Yousafzai received an outpouring of international support and was moved her to the U.K. for treatment.
In July 2013, Yousafzai addressed the United Nations, telling delegates that the Taliban "thought that bullets would silence us, but they failed.
"The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions," she said defiantly, "but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born."
Pakistan
Nobel Peace Prize
India