In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was a 14-year-old activist for girls' access to education in Pakistan's northwestern Swat Valley, then a stronghold of the Taliban. Then the militants tried to kill her. A decade later, she is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a UN messenger of peace.
Ten Years After Being Shot By Taliban, Malala Yousafzai Tours The World As UN Peace Envoy
- By RFE/RL
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In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was a 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl from the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan who was campaigning for girls' education. She also spoke out against the Pakistani Taliban militants active in the area.
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In December 2011, she received the National Youth Peace Prize from Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad.
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On October 9, 2012, Taliban militants shot her as she boarded a school bus, injuring her and two classmates. In this photo, soldiers shift the injured Yousafzai from a helicopter at an army hospital in Rawalpindi following the attack.
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Civil society activists and journalists carry candles and photographs of Yousafzai during a protest against the Taliban's attempt on her life in Islamabad on October 11, 2012.
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Pakistani students shout slogans during a protest against the attack in Quetta on October 11, 2012.
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Women supporters of the religious political party Sunni Tehreek demonstrate in support of Yousufzai in Islamabad on October 14, 2012.
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Malala Yousafzai poses with her father, Ziauddin, and her two younger brothers, Khushal Khan and Atal Khan (right), as she recuperates at the the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on October 26, 2012.
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Yousafzai is introduced before her first speech after the Taliban tried to kill her at United Nations Headquarters in New York on July 12, 2013.
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Yousafzai receives the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award for 2013 from U2 singer Bono in Dublin on September 17, 2013.
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A salesman arranges copies of I Am Malala, Yousafzai's memoir co-authored with British journalist Christina Lamb, at a bookstore in Ahmedabad, India, on October 9, 2013.
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U.S. President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and their daughter Malia (left) meet with Yousafzai in the Oval Office in Washington on October 11, 2013.
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Yousafzai gives a copy of her book to Queen Elizabeth II during a reception at Buckingham Palace in London on October 18, 2013.
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Yousafzai addresses the European Parliament after she received the 2013 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought at an award ceremony in Strasbourg, France, on November 20, 2013.
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Yousafzai and Syrian refugee Mazoon Rakan (left) tour a UNICEF center to visit an art gallery for children at the Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq on February 18, 2014.
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Yousafzai holds her Nobel Peace Prize at the award ceremony in Oslo on December 10, 2014.
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Pakistani activists pose for a photograph as they cut a cake in celebration of Yousafzai winning the Nobel Prize in Islamabad on October 14, 2014.
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Yousafzai talks with schoolgirls at the Abrar Syrian refugee informal settlement in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley on July 12, 2015.
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Yousafzai speaks during a plenary meeting of the UN Sustainable Development Summit on the eve of the general debate of the UN General Assembly in New York on September 25, 2015.
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Yousafzai addresses young refugees at Kenya's sprawling Dadaab refugee complex during a visit organized by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Garissa, Kenya, on July 12, 2016.
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Yousafzai poses for a photograph on March 31, 2018, during her first visit home to Mingora in Pakistan's Swat Valley since being shot by Taliban militants.
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A poster with the pictures of Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin, hangs on the wall of a school in her home district in the Swat Valley on March 30, 2018.
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Yousafzai meets elders from Swat and discusses education in Islamabad on March 31, 2018.
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Yousafzai celebrates graduating from Oxford University with her family at an undisclosed location on June 18, 2020.
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Yousafzai poses with her father, Ziauddin, her husband, Asser Malik (second right), and her mother, Toorpekey, at their home in Birmingham, England, on November 9, 2021.
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Yousafzai meets with victims of Pakistan's devastating monsoon floods on October 12 in only her second visit since being shot by the Taliban a decade before.
