1. 52
Access to education for girls is sadly still a
major sticking point in many countries across
the world. Pakistan’s youngest activist for
change, Malala Yousafzai, who caught the
attention of the world when she was shot in the
head for demanding her right to attend school,
has been awarded the King Hussein Leadership
Award and visited Jordan’s Jubilee school to
talk about her experiences.
Feature: Lena Kassicieh. Photography: Nazzar El Hoot AND CORBIS
In the face
of danger
VIVINVESTIGATES
Malala Yousafzai,
the brave young
activist who was
shot in the head by
the Taliban

2. 53
F
ew of us can say that by age
16 we had had to fight for
our right to education, been
nominated for a Nobel Peace
Prize, been shot in the head
by an armed militant or travelled the
world giving speeches about the impor-
tance of equal rights and education for
women. But for Malala Yousafzai, it was a
choice between doing all that or languish-
ing in a grim future without any prospect
of education or change.
Malala’s journey as a campaigner for
girls’ right to education began five years
ago when her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai,
himself an activist for education, took
her to a local press club in Peshawar
to talk about the Taliban’s efforts to
limit girls’ access to education in the
region. In 2008, the BBC Urdu editor,
Aamer Ahmed Khan and several of his
colleagues, had hoped to find a schoolgirl
willing to document her life in the Swat
Valley with the emergent and stifling
authority of the Taliban. Malala’s father,
who owned a school and was a local
teacher as well, had been in contact with
them and suggested his own daughter for
the role. At the time, Malala was just 11
years old but agreed to do it straight away.
At the time, life in the Swat Valley
was isolated, especially for women, as
television, music, education and shopping
were all prohibited. The severed bodies of
policemen were strung up in town squares
to serve as examples for locals to show
what happened to people who chose not
to abide by the Taliban’s regulations.
Malala’s first entry was posted on the
BBC Urdu blog on January 3, 2009,
having been hand-written by her and then
passed on to a journalist who would then
scan and email it. Her notes document
her experience and standpoint about the
first combat that occurred in Swat Valley,
as military operations increased and fewer
female pupils attended school, leading to
schools' eventual shutdown.
The audience sits in silence as they listen to Malala recount some of her experiences in the past couple years, and the
brave battle she has fought
“AT THE TIME, LIFE IN
THE SWAT VALLEY WAS
ISOLATED, ESPECIALLY
FOR WOMEN”
Malala accepts the King Hussein Leadership Award at the Jubilee School in Amman, Jordan

3. 54
Malala spoke at the We
Day UK at Wembley
Arena, London, on
March 7 this year
The stirring, emotive journal-like
entries that Malala wrote for the BBC
gave the outside world a rare glimpse of
the growing decline in living conditions
in the area, most markedly for women.
After a year of writing for the BBC,
and moving around the area to avoid
danger, Malala was approached by New
York Times journalist Adam Ellick, who
made a documentary about her life as the
Pakistani military began to intervene in
the region. This saw the rise of Malala’s
recognition internationally, and she
was nominated for the International
Children’s Peace Prize by South African
activist Desmond Tutu.
Unfortunately, her new-found fame had
a major downside. She received a slew of
death threats in local newspapers, and
intimidating notes were slipped under
her door. She also received many threats
on Facebook, in addition to fake profiles
being created in her name. These threats
were Taliban attempts to silence Malala,
a girl who refused to be silenced. Finally,
at a Taliban meeting held in the summer
of 2012, leaders collectively decided to
assassinate the student activist.
DESPERATE TIMES
On one auspicious day in October 2012,
when Malala boarded her school bus
after finishing an exam in the Swat Valley,
a gunman asked for her by name. The
students on the bus identified her and
the gunman proceeded to point a gun at
her head, firing three times. One of the
bullets hit the left side of her forehead,
ricocheting through her skin and then
into her shoulder. After the horrific
attack, Malala remained in a coma until
she was moved to the Queen Elizabeth
Hospital in London, UK, for methodical
rehabilitation. Three days after the
incident, a group of Pakistani Islamic
clerics issued a fatwa – a decree of Islamic
law – against the group which tried to
kill her. The Taliban countered this fatwa
and restated its objective of assassinating
Malala and her father.

4. 55
Teenage students
of the all-female
secondary school
Gundi Pira in the
Pattika area of
Pakistan are eager
to learn
Girls are given the chance to learn the alphabet, but most of the time it is so that they can properly read the
Quran, while other educational books are forbidden
The brutal assassination attempt on a
minor triggered an international outcry,
support, rage and commiseration for
Malala and the beleaguered youth in
Pakistan. During this time, the United
Nations Special Envoy for Global
Education launched a UN petition in
Malala’s name, coining the slogan “I am
Malala”, which stipulated that all children
worldwide be in school by the end of
2015. This petition helped lead to the
ratification of Pakistan’s first Right to
Education Bill.
Later, in April 2013, Malala was
featured in Time Magazine as one of
the 100 Most Influential People in the
World. She also won Pakistan’s first
National Youth Peace Prize and was
nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace
Prize, making her the youngest person
and first girl to ever be nominated.
Though Malala’s reception in Pakistan
in the past couple of years has been
mixed, internationally she is viewed
unambiguously as a hero for many,
standing as a beacon of hope for those
yearning for rights to education, freedom
of speech and religion.
It is clear that these nominations and
awards will not be stopping anytime
soon, as Malala was recently awarded
the King Hussein Leadership award
here in Amman, Jordan. In February,
Malala visited the Jubilee School, which
is a secondary co-educational institution
that provides merit-based scholarships
to students from diverse socioeconomic
backgrounds, to participate in a discussion
with the students as part of the school’s
leadership programme. The programme
works to equip students with skills such as
critical thinking, leadership and conflict-
resolution, to prepare them for roles as
leaders in their respective communities.
The King Hussein Leadership Prize
is an international award presented to
individuals, institutions, and groups
which have worked to encourage and
campaign for sustainable development,
human rights, equity and global peace.
Malala was nominated for the 2012 King
Hussein Leadership prize, which was the
period in which she was still recovering,
and she will be awarded it later this year.
A WORLDWIDE CRISIS
Recent figures from UNICEF show
that a staggering 61 million children
globally are deprived of a basic education.
UNICEF estimates that 60 per cent

5. 56
A group of teachers and students of the Bacha Khan Model High School for Girls hold signs while protesting
against the shooting of Malala, at the Peshawar Press Club
of these children are girls. In countries
like Afghanistan, Mali, Niger, Yemen,
Chad and Burkina Faso, girls do not
attend school for more than a year in
total. In Sub-Saharan Africa, four out
of five women do not receive any form
of education whatsoever. Malala’s home
country of Pakistan has one of the lowest
literacy rates in the world, at roughly 46
per cent. In rural areas, the female literacy
rate is 25 per cent and only one in five
girls is enrolled in school.
Secondary education is unfortunately
an extravagance only afforded to by an
extremely diminutive minority. School
enrolment for girls drops by nearly 90 per
cent between 1st and 12th grade.
While the facts are appalling, the
circumstances are only further aggravated
by the high costs correlated with the lack
of education for girls in the developing
world. The discrepancy between the
two genders has disastrous implications
that extend far beyond the classroom.
UNICEF research demonstrates that
investments in the education of girls can
significantly bolster families, and help
to lift them out of poverty. Educating
women produces a noticeable increase in
a country’s agricultural productivity and
overall Gross Domestic Product, lowers
the instances of female genital mutilation
and allows for an increase in the numbers
of women in parliaments, thereby
completing the circle in developing
society as a whole.
Poverty, unfortunately, remains a huge
obstacle when it comes to girls' education.
UNICEF reports that some 17 per cent
of Pakistani children are working in
order to sustain their families. One of the
largest employers of children in Pakistan
is the domestic help sector, which
typically employs more girls than boys.
Fortunately, in bigger cities and towns
people have joined together to send their
daughters to school. Literacy is higher in
cities like Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad,
Rawalpindi, Hyderabad and Peshawar
due to facilities that are working to
promote literacy and education for girls.
Illiteracy is, however, hugely alarming
in rural areas due to cultural and social
obstacles.
A SOCIETY’S SOLUTION?
The exiled Pakistani government
of Nawaz Sharif first developed the
concept of unofficial education for
women throughout the country. Sharif
worked to ascertain the prime minister's
literacy administration and was working
to develop around 100,000 non-
conventional schools for girls and women.
Unfortunately, due to the change of
government and the on-going political
instability, his plans faced countless
obstacles.
Still, under former prime minister
Benazir Bhutto and president Zia Ul-
Haq, around 1,500 informal schools for
girls were set up and continue to function
to this day. The government remains
largely unable to make any significant
advances, and is reluctant to help NGOs
or small political or religious parties.
They maintain that their connection with
local landlords and chieftains, as members
of the two major political parties, is
crucial. It is even reluctant to help NGOs
or other small political or religious parties
do the job, because in order to maintain
control, it needs the support of these
landlords and chieftains who strongly
oppose education, believing that it will
cause their “subjects” to drift from their
support and blind faith of the militant
parties. International media has played
an important and effective role, with
help of course from Malala, in promoting
education throughout the country and
region. The situation though still remains
in critical condition in rural areas and
small towns, where approximately 70 per
cent of the population resides.
Despite the government’s lack of
apparent concern for promoting girls’
education, several political parties,
religious groups and NGOs are actively
working to do so. A countrywide NGO
called Al Khidmat provides 100 non-
formal schools in small villages of Sing,

6. 57
Pakistani children sitting together and praying for Malala's recovery during one of the many candle light vigils
held for her after the attack
Pakistani women united to pray for Malala during a prayer ceremony held at Jinnah Ground, organised by the Muttehda Qaumi Movement
Baluchistan and NWFP Provinces,
where girls and women alike are admitted
for basic primary education. Another
Khairpur-based NGO, based in the Sind
Province, is running 50 formal and non-
formal girls’ schools in the outskirts of
the city. Green Crescent is another, that is
Karachi-based, and running 20 informal
schools for girls in villages throughout
the provinces. In Punjab, the Al-Ghazali
Education Trust, a Lahore-based
organisation, is operating some 200
formal and non-formal schools, mostly
for girls and women, all over the province.
Thankfully, activists like young Malala
are bravely taking a stand, and becoming
role models for millions of people
throughout the world. Malala has hugely
influenced human rights, global policy-
making and girls’ right to security and
education, and we look forward to what
lies ahead.
VIVINVESTIGATES