Pakistan's Young Global Leader Malala Wins Sakharov Prize

Brussels, Belgium.  The European Union has awarded its top human rights prize to Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted for a Taliban attack for her efforts to promote education for women.  European Union lawmakers announced the winner of the $65,000 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Thursday in Brussels.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot on a school bus by the Taliban last October for campaigning on the  education of girls, sits on the sidelines of a news conference convened by 'A World at School' in New York, Sept. 23, 2013.

Malala was eleven when she became an activist for women's education, freedom, and self-determination in Pakistan's Swat Valley, where women were banned by the Taliban from attending school in 2009. She began a blog, writing under a pseudonym, and quickly became a prominent voice for women's rights.She survived a nearly fatal Taliban assassination attempt while riding a school bus in 2012 and underwent multiple surgeries in Britain to remove a bullet to the neck and alleviate the swelling of her brain.

Since then, she has remained in Britain but resumed her activism, addressing the United Nations in July and publishing a memoir earlier this week, on the first anniversary of her attack.Past winners of the Sakharov Prize include South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Tweet