Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousufzai expressed her joy after returning to Pakistan for a global summit on girls' education in the Islamic world here on Saturday.
The renowned education activist was shot by the terrorist group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) IN 2012 when she was a schoolgirl and has returned to the country just a few times ever since.
“I’m truly honoured, overwhelmed, and happy to be back in Pakistan,” she told reporters as she reached the conference hall in the capital, Islamabad.
The two-day summit was set to commence on Saturday morning with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif opening the first session together with representatives from Muslim-majority countries, where tens of millions of girls are out of school.
Malala, who is a special guest at the summit, is set to deliver her address Sunday.
In her post on X on Friday, Malala wrote, “I will speak about protecting rights for all girls to go to school and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women & girls.”
Pakistan’s education minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told reporters that the Taliban government in Afghanistan had been invited to attend, but Islamabad has not received any response from their response.
Since taking control of power in 2021, the Taliban regime has imposed a severe version of Islamic laws preventing girls from receiving school education, which the United Nations has described as “gender apartheid.”
Pakistan is facing a severe education crisis, with more than 26 million children out of school, mostly as a result of poverty, according to official government figures—one of the highest figures in the world.
Ms Yousufzai became a household name after she was attacked by Pakistan Taliban militants on a school bus in the remote Swat valley in 2012.
She then fled the country, took shelter in the United Kingdom, and went on to become a global advocate for girls’ education and, at the age of 17, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Follow us
